A suspect has been arrested after eight people were killed and at least 10 injured in Serbia’s second mass shooting this week, state media has reported.
The gunman fired an automatic weapon from a moving vehicle near a village 60km (37 miles) south of Belgrade.
Earlier reports said that the perpetrator was on the run.
A teenager killed nine at a Belgrade school on Wednesday, the worst shooting the country had seen in years.
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On Friday morning, Serbian media said that special police forces had arrived at the villages of Mladenovac and Dubona, where the latest shooting occurred.
Photos from the scene show police officers stopping cars at checkpoints as they try to locate the gunman. A helicopter, drones and multiple police patrols also searched for the suspect in the area around Dubona.
Reports on local media say a 20-year-old man started firing at people with an automatic weapon after having an argument with a police officer in a park in Dubona on Thursday evening.
The man is then said to have proceeded to shoot people from a car, killing at least eight people and wounding many more.
All injured people admitted to hospital were born after the year 2000, Serbian broadcaster RTS has reported.
Two people aged 21 and 23 were operated on, but remain in critical condition.
The minister of health, Danica Grujičić, and the head of the Security Intelligence Agency, Aleksandar Vulin, reportedly travelled to the area in the early hours of Friday.
On Wednesday, a thirteen-year-old boy shot dead eight fellow pupils at his school in Belgrade, as well as a security guard. It prompted the Serbian government to propose tighter restrictions of gun ownership.
Mass shootings are extremely rare in Serbia, which has very strict gun laws, but gun ownership in the country is among the highest in Europe.
The western Balkans are awash with illegal weapons following wars and unrest in the 1990s. In 2019, it was estimated that there are 39.1 firearms per 100 people in Serbia – the third highest in the world, behind the US and Montenegro.
