05 May 2023 , 02:57
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At least eight people have been killed and 14 people have been wounded in a drive-by style shooting in Serbia's second mass killing in two days.
The attacker used an automatic weapon to shoot randomly at people near the town of Mladenovac, 30 miles south of the capital.
The 21-year-old suspect, who fled after the attack, has been arrested near Kragujevac.
It comes after another deadly shooting on Wednesday in Belgrade when a 13-year-old boy used his father’s guns in a school shooting rampage that killed eight of his schoolmates and a school guard.
Serbian Interior Minister Bratislav Gasic called Thursday's shooting "a terrorist act".
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Special police and helicopter units have been sent to the region as well as ambulances, it added.
The bloodshed sent shockwaves through the Balkan nation (AFP via Getty Images)According to local media, after a late-night argument in a schoolyard near Mladenovac, the suspect returned with an assault rifle, opened fire and continued to shoot at people at random from a moving car.
The bloodshed sent shockwaves through the Balkan nation unused to such mass murders.
“I heard some tak-tak-tak sounds," Milan Prokic, a resident of Dubona, a village near the town of Mladenovac told AP. Prokic said he first thought villagers were shooting to celebrate childbirth, as is a tradition in Serbia and the Balkans.
“But it wasn’t that. Shame, great shame,” Prokic added. “They say the kid killed them for no reason. They say there was an argument here at the centre of the village, he went home, took his arms and came back to kill them."
Prokic said he didn't believe this: "If it were true, why did he go to neighbouring villages to kill?”
Another Dubona villager also said heard gunshots late last night and came out of his home.
Locals are seen in front of a shop in the village of Dubona near the town of Mladenovac (AFP via Getty Images)“I felt the smell of gunpowder. I heard noise from the direction of the school. We saw people lying on the ground,” said the man, who refused to give his name because he feared for his safety.
Dozens of Serbian students, many wearing black and carrying flowers, paid silent homage on Thursday to peers killed a day earlier.
The students filled the streets around the school in central Belgrade as they streamed in from all over the city.
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Earlier, thousands had lined up to lay flowers, light candles and leave toys to commemorate the eight children and a school guard who were killed on Wednesday morning.
Police block the road near the village of Malo Orasje, just outside the town of Mladenovac (AFP via Getty Images)Though Serbia is awash with weapons left over from the wars of the 1990s, mass shootings are extremely rare.
Eight children and a security guard were killed in Wednesday's shooting at Vladislav Ribnikar primary school in Belgrade.
The shooting also left seven people hospitalised - six children and a teacher. One girl who was shot in the head remains in a life-threatening condition, and a boy is in serious condition with spinal injuries, doctors said on Thursday morning.
It was the first in the country's modern history. The last mass shooting before this week was in 2013 when a war veteran killed 13 people in a central Serbian village.