A child was arrested Wednesday after allegedly shooting a teacher at an elementary school in the northeastern Bosnian city of Lukavac, officials and the family of the victim said.
The incident comes a month after back-to-back shootings rocked neighbouring Serbia, including a rampage at an elementary school in Belgrade where a 13-year-old gunned down 10 people — including nine fellow classmates.
“The child, who is not yet 14, is under police supervision in the premises of the Lukavac Police Department, while firearms and other discarded items are secured until the investigation begins,” the interior ministry of Tuzla canton said.
Officials described the suspect as a former student who had recently moved to another school.
“The child was transferred to another school from the start of the second semester as a result of a disciplinary measure,” Ahmed Omerovic, education minister for Tuzla, told reporters.
“Today was the end of classes in all schools in the territory of Tuzla canton,” he added.
The wounded victim is an English teacher and assistant principal identified as Ismet Osmanovic, his father told local broadcaster N1.
According to the hospital in the nearby city of Tuzla, the victim in the shooting had sustained “gunshot wounds to the neck”.
“The patient was intubated and he is being operated on,” the University Clinic Centre of Tuzla said in a statement, according to local media.
“The operation is still ongoing. Doctors told me he was stable,” Osmanovic’s father said.
The shootings in Serbia widely reverberated throughout the Balkans, with makeshift shrines and memorial services held in cities across the former Yugoslavia, including Bosnia.
During the war in Bosnia in the 1990s, an untold number of weapons were trafficked into the country due to an arms embargo.
Following the war’s end in 1995, officials repeatedly called for Bosnians to hand over their weapons during a years-long amnesty period, as security forces raided homes believed to harbour weapons.
Despite the efforts, a large number of guns are scattered throughout Bosnia.
According to the Small Arms Survey research group, approximately 31 out of every 100 citizens owns a gun in the Balkan nation.
