At least eight students and a security guard are dead after a shooting at an elementary school in Serbia’s capital Belgrade.
Another six pupils and a teacher were injured in the attack and have been taken to hospital, the interior ministry said in a statement.
Police arrested a 13-year-old student at the Vladislav Ribnikar school in central Belgrade in connection with the Wednesday morning’s attack.
The suspect is alleged to have used two guns owned by his father, officials said.
Police say the boy planned the attack for a month and had a list of targets.
The suspect’s classmates say he walked into a history class, first shot the teacher and then turned his weapon on his fellow students
Officers in helmets and bulletproof vests cordoned off the area around the school, located in the central Vracar neighbourhood, shortly after 08:40 local time (07:40 GMT).
“The police sent all available patrols immediately to the spot and arrested a suspected minor – a seventh grade student who is suspected of firing several shots from his father’s gun in the direction of students and school security,” the interior ministry said in a statement.
Local media carried images of what they said was the suspect being led away from the scene by police, with his hands cuffed and his head covered by a jacket.
“I saw kids running out from the school, screaming. Parents came, they were in panic. Later I heard three shots,” one student told the Serbian state broadcaster RTS.
Milan Milosevic, the father of one of the pupils at the school, said his daughter was in the class where the gun was fired and managed to escape.
“[The boy] first shot the teacher and then he started shooting randomly,” Milosevic told broadcaster N1.
“I saw the security guard lying under the table. I saw two girls with blood on their shirts. They say he [the shooter] was quiet and a good pupil. He recently joined their class.”
Milan Nedeljkovic, mayor of the central Vracar district where the school is located, said doctors were fighting to save the teacher’s life.
President Vučić says the mother of the 13-year-old school shooter has also been arrested.
The boy’s father was detained earlier on suspicion of aggravated endangering of public safety.
The incident rocked the Balkan nation, where school shootings are extremely rare and gun violence is uncommon. Gun ownership in the country is among the highest in Europe.
In 2019, it was estimated that there are 39.1 firearms per 100 people living in Serbia, the joint third highest in the world – alongside nearby Montenegro – and behind only the US and Yemen.
With an estimated population of 6.7 million, this equates to over 2.7 million guns in civilian hands in the Balkan nation – around 1.5 million of which are unregistered.
