A shooting at a school in Belgrade, Serbia, resulted in the deaths of at least eight students and a security guard. Six other pupils and a teacher were also injured and taken to the hospital. The suspect, a 14-year-old seventh-grade student, was arrested, and officials claim that he used his father’s gun. The motive behind the attack is currently under investigation.

The police immediately cordoned off the area, and an intensive investigation is underway to determine the circumstances that led to the tragedy. Parents were heard crying in the streets around the school hours after the shooting, with some still unsure if their children were alive. Some of them expressed frustration with the lack of information provided by the police.

Parents of students who were caught up in the shooting pleaded with police officers for any information about their children’s whereabouts, while others frantically called hospitals and doctors in Belgrade. Local media showed images of the suspect, who was handcuffed and had his head covered by a jacket, being led away from the scene by police.

Three pupils who were injured in the shooting were transferred to a local hospital, where two boys were stable but had gunshot wounds to their lower extremities, while a girl had a serious head injury and was undergoing surgery. The teacher who was shot was fighting for his life. The shooting is a rare occurrence in Serbia, which has strict gun laws, but gun ownership is among the highest in Europe.

The western Balkans are flooded with illegal weapons following wars and unrest in the 1990s, and Serbia has the third-highest number of firearms per 100 people in the world.

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