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Serbia saw its second mass shooting in two days, state media reported late Thursday, after a man fired an automatic weapon from a moving car, killing eight people and wounding 14 more in a village south of Belgrade.
Radio Television of Serbia said a suspect, identified by the initials U.B., was arrested near the central Serbian town of Kragujevac. Serbia’s interior ministry said the arrest came after an “extensive search.”
Mass shootings are extremely rare in Serbia, which has strict gun laws. But the western Balkan country has one of the highest rates of gun ownership in Europe − 39.1 firearms per 100 people, according to the Small Arms Survey, a Geneva-based organization. The U.S. has the highest, with 120.5 guns per 100 people. The western Balkans also have an entrenched gun culture, a legacy of the 1990s wars, which left the region awash with guns.
Thursday’s shooting came after a 13-year-old boy used his father’s guns in a rampage at a school in Belgrade on Wednesday that killed eight of his fellow students and a school guard. The incident sent shockwaves through a nation unused to mass murders. The last mass shooting before this week was in 2016, when a man motivated by jealousy shot dead five people, including his wife, and injured another 20 at a Serbian cafe.
Thursday’s incident came as authorities moved to tighten Serbia’s gun laws in the wake of the shooting earlier in the week. A government proposal included imposing a two-year moratorium on issuing permits for small firearms and a pledge to review all existing weapons permits within three months.
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