BELGRADE – A man has shot dead five people and wounded 22 early on Saturday when a man entered a cafe in northern Serbia and opened fire with an assault rifle, police said.
The incident happened about 1:40am on Saturday (local time) in the town of Zitiste, around 80 kilometres north of Belgrade.
Police arrested the suspect, a man in his late 30s identified only as Z.S., immediately after the shooting during a local festival in the village of Zitiste, around 80 kilometers north of Belgrade.
A police statement read. “The man entered the cafe and opened fire with an automatic rifle, killing his wife and another woman, then he continued to shoot at other citizens in the cafe.”
Interior Minister Nebojsa Stefanovic visited the scene and said the weapon was illegal.
He said. “Jealousy could be a motive,” he added. “He was a quiet man; he had no criminal record.”
Serbia and most of the western Balkans contains hundreds of thousands of illegal weapons following wars and unrest in the 1990s.