A boy gunned down fellow pupils in a Belgrade school on Wednesday morning in a pre-planned attack, shooting dead at least eight plus a security guard
The mass shooting at a school in Belgrade, Serbia Wednesday morning was carefully pre-planned by the suspect, a 13-year-old boy, according to authorities.
Several people are dead, and others wounded.
Using two handguns that belonged to his father, the boy fired first at a security guard and three girls in the hallway.
He then entered a history class and shot the teacher and classmates, police said, adding that he also had two Molotov cocktails.
14-year-old Evgenija said she knew the suspected gunman.
“He was somehow silent, and appeared nice and had good grades. Did not know much about him, he was not that open to everyone. I would never expect that this could happen.”
Police said a seventh-grade student had been arrested after confessing to the shooting.
Local media say this was the moment the suspect was taken into custody.
Some of those who were shot are still in hospital with life-threatening injuries.
This is the head of Belgrade’s police, Veselin Milic:
“He said himself that he planned to commit this crime. This is a list of children he planned to execute. He made a plan of how to enter and exit the school, that was found at his desk. And, like he said himself, he designated primary targets. It looks a little as if it’s from a video game, or a horror film, which indicates that he planned in detail how to enter which classroom and how to execute each child.”
Authorities say an investigation into the motives for the attack is under way.
And Serbia’s interior minister says the suspect’s father has also been arrested.
Gun laws are very strict in Serbia but civilian gun ownership is also widespread.
The country has witnessed several mass shootings over the past decade.
And hundreds of thousands of weapons remain unaccounted for after the Balkan wars of the 1990s.
