Police in Bosnia on Wednesday arrested a child who allegedly shot a teacher at a primary school in the northeastern city of Lukavac, officials and the victim’s family said.
The incident comes a month after successive shooting incidents rocked neighboring Serbia, including a shooting at a primary school in Belgrade where a 13-year-old shot and killed ten people, including nine fellow students.
“The child, who is not yet 14 years old, is being held under police supervision in the Lukavac police station, while firearms and other items, which were thrown away, remain in safe custody until the investigation begins,” the Ministry of the Interior of the Tuzla canton said.
Officers described the suspect as a former pupil who had recently been transferred to another school.
“The child was transferred to another school from the beginning of the second semester as a result of a disciplinary measure,” Ahmed Omerovic, education minister of Tuzla, told reporters.
“Today was the last day of the semester in all schools in the Tuzla Canton,” he added.
The police cordoned off the area around the school after the shooting.
The victim is an English teacher and deputy principal at the school, said Ismet Osmanovic, father of the victim, according to the local broadcaster N1.
According to the hospital in the nearby city of Tuzla, the victim of the shooting suffered “gunshot wounds to the neck”.
“The patient is currently undergoing surgery,” the university clinic center of Tuzla said in a statement, according to local media.
“Doctors said he is stable,” added Osmanovic.
The shootings in Serbia made headlines in the Balkan states, with makeshift memorials and commemorative services held in cities across the former Yugoslavia, including Bosnia.
During the war in Bosnia in the 1990s, an unknown number of firearms were smuggled into the country as a result of an arms embargo.
Towards the end of the war in 1995, officers repeatedly requested that Bosnians surrender their firearms during a years-long amnesty period, while security forces searched homes where firearms were suspected to be kept.
Despite the efforts, there are still a large number of firearms spread all over Bosnia.
According to the Small Arms Survey research group, an estimated 31 out of every 100 citizens own a firearm in the Balkan country.
