Serbian police said a seventh grade student had been arrested.
Belgrade:
Serbia’s interior ministry said a 14-year-old boy shot his teacher in a Belgrade classroom on Wednesday morning before opening fire on other students and security guards, killing eight students and a security guard.
Milan Milosevic, the father of a student at the Vladislav Ribnikar elementary school, said his daughter was in the classroom where the gun was fired.
“She managed to escape. (The boys) … first shot the teacher and then started shooting indiscriminately,” Milosevic told broadcaster N1.
Milan Nedeljkovic, mayor of the central Vrakar district where the school is located, said doctors were fighting to save the teacher’s life.
An interior ministry statement said eight children and a security guard had died and that six children, along with the teacher, had been hospitalised.
Police said that a student of class VII has been arrested.
“I saw the security guard lying under the table. I saw two girls with blood on their shirts. They say he (the shooter) was calm and a good student. He recently joined their class,” Milosevic said, who had reached there by running. school after shooting
Officers wearing helmets and bulletproof jackets cordoned off the area around the school.
A girl studying at a high school next to Vladislav Ribnikar told state TV RTS, “I saw children running from the school, screaming. Parents came, they were in a panic. Later I heard three shots. “
The police said in a statement that the casualties were being treated and the cause of the shooting was being investigated.
Mass shootings are comparatively rare in Serbia, which has very strict gun laws. But after the war and unrest in the 1990s, the western Balkans is littered with hundreds of thousands of illegal weapons.
Serbian authorities have issued several amnesties for owners handing over or registering illegal guns.
(Except for the headline, this story has not been edited by NDTV staff and is published from a syndicated feed.)