A Serbian police officer on Saturday killed a man who shot him in the neck with a crossbow in front of the Israeli embassy in Belgrade, the Serbian interior minister said.
Authorities said some arrests had been made and a number of people known to the security services were suspected of being linked to the attack, which the Serbian prime minister described as a “heinous terrorist act”.
The officer “used a weapon in self-defence and defeated the attacker, who died as a result of his injuries”, said Interior Minister Ivica Dacic.
He said the incident happened at around 11am on Saturday morning in the Serbian capital, when an “unknown person … shot a member of the gendarmerie, who was on duty securing the Israeli embassy, from a crossbow and hit him in the neck”.
The officer, who has undergone surgery in hospital, was in his guard booth when the attack happened.
This was an act of insanity, which cannot be attributed to any religion and any nation
Dacic told reporters later that there were early indications connecting the attack with people suspected of being linked to the Wahhabi movement – an ultraconservative branch of Islam that dominates in Saudi Arabia.
“Some suspicions are already present that we are talking about persons already known to the security services, and we are talking about the Wahhabi movement”, Dacic said.
He said several people had been arrested for “prevention reasons” and that overall security had been stepped up in Belgrade.
Special prosecutors have taken over the case, added Dacic.
“There is no doubt that this is a terrorist act directed against the Serbian state and a member of the gendarmerie,” he said.
Serbian Prime Minister Milos Vucevic strongly condemned what he labelled a “heinous terrorist act”.
“This was an act of insanity, which cannot be attributed to any religion and any nation. It is a crime of an individual,” he said, according to quotes from the Beta news agency.
The prime minister vowed that his country would be able to firmly respond to the threat of terrorism and stressed Serbian citizens could “feel safe”.
The Israeli foreign ministry called it an “attempted terrorist attack in the vicinity” of the country’s embassy in Serbia.
“The embassy is closed and no employee of the embassy was injured”, it said in a statement, saying the circumstances are still being investigated.
The Balkan nation has continued arms sales to Israel after the war in Gaza started with Hamas’s October 7 attack on southern Israel, which claimed 1,195 lives, mostly of civilians, according to a tally based on Israeli figures.
The militants also seized hostages, 116 of whom remain in Gaza although the army says 42 are dead.
Israel’s retaliatory offensive has killed at least 37,834 people, also mostly civilians, according to data from the health ministry in Hamas-run Gaza.
