Serbian President Aleksandar Vucic has vowed to launch a large-scale disarmament plan to remove hundreds of thousands of weapons from the country following a mass shooting in the Balkan country this week.
Serbian police are said to have arrested the suspected gunman after a shooting from a passing car near Belgrade killed eight and injured at least ten others.
“We will do an almost complete disarming of Serbia,” Mr Vucic said during a live broadcast hours after the final shooting, reports RTE.
The reported arrest comes after an hours-long night-long manhunt in the country’s second mass arrest this week.
The drive-by shooting happened a day after nine people were shot dead at an elementary school in the Serbian capital.
Near Mladenovac, an attacker armed with an automatic weapon opened fire from a moving vehicle before fleeing, state television RTS reported.
The police searched for the attacker after the shooting with a strong security presence and helicopters in the region.
The police blocked the road leading to the villages of Malo Orasje and Dubona, reports RTE.
Anxious relatives gathered outside the emergency centre in Belgrade, where at least eight injured people were hospitalized, TV N1 reported.
Minister of Health Danica Grujičić visited the centre briefly.
Interior Minister Bratislav Gašić called the shooting a “terrorist act,” RTS reported.
Honorary Consul of Serbia in Ireland Zivko Jaksic told RTÉ’s News at One that the recent shooting has shocked Serbian communities around the world.
He said there is some level of gang violence in Serbia or isolated acts of murder or attempted murder, but what happened this week was “totally unprecedented, out of the blue”, reports RTE.
He added that the government has responded vigorously and despite strict gun laws in the country, a large number of them are still being held illegally.
“Police are going to be cracking down on that. The shock is so enormous that the Government will have to react quite vigorously on that,” reports RTE.
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