Police officers stand in front of a secondary school building in Sanski Most, northwest of the Bosnian capital Sarajevo, on August 21, 2024, after a school employee shot and killed three people. | Photo credit: AP
A school employee shot and killed three people in a town in northwestern Bosnia on Wednesday (August 21, 2024), police said. The shooter was seriously injured after trying to kill himself.
The shooting occurred at about 10 a.m. local time at a secondary school in Sanski Most, about 300 km northwest of the Bosnian capital Sarajevo, regional police spokesman Adnan Beganovic said.
Beganovic told The Associated Press The man used a “military weapon, an automatic rifle”. He then attempted to kill himself and is in critical condition at a hospital in nearby Banja Luka.
Beganovic said the victims included the school’s principal, a secretary and a teacher. Bosnian schools are closed for summer vacation, but Beganovic said people were present at the school because re-examinations were being held.
Regional N1 television reported the man had a dispute with school management.
No other details were immediately available.
The Balkan region is awash in small arms since the wars of the 1990s that were part of the breakup of Yugoslavia, especially in Bosnia, which has a population of about 3.5 million. According to a study conducted by the United Nations Development Program in 2010, about 750,000 weapons were held illegally in Bosnia.
Last month, a former soldier walked into an elderly care home in a quiet central Croatian town and opened fire, killing six people and wounding six others.
In May last year, a teenager in Serbia used his father’s gun to open fire at a school, killing nine children and a school guard. A day later, a 20-year-old shooter killed nine people and wounded 12 in a rampage outside the capital, Belgrade.