An attack took place in Belgrade targeting the Israeli embassy in Serbia. A man with a crossbow seriously injured a police officer on duty in front of the Israeli representation in Belgrade on Saturday June 29, before being shot dead, the Serbian government announced. The latter spoke of an attack “ terrorist “with a possible link to the current” wahhabism » of Islam.
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The attack took place around 11 a.m. local time (9 a.m. UT) in an upscale neighborhood of Belgrade. The attacker, who posed as a tourist, allegedly asked a police officer on duty in front of the Israeli embassy where a museum was located. This before extracting a crossbow from his bag and shooting his victim, hitting him in the neck. The police officer had time to fire his attacker with his service weapon, hitting him several times. The assailant died from his injuries shortly after, reports our correspondent in Belgrade, Laurent Rouy.
The policeman’s life was still in question Saturday afternoon, as surgeons struggled to remove the crossbow bolt still in his neck.
Arriving quickly on the scene, the police made several arrests in the immediate vicinity of the attack, without it being known at the moment whether they were accomplices. According to the government, the arrests were made “ preventively » and the alert level was raised in Belgrade
A surprise in Serbia, which is not very used to terrorism or anti-Semitism
The perpetrator of the attack was identified as a 25-year-old Serb. Calling the attack a ” terrorist act directed against the Serbian state », Interior Minister Ivica Dacic clarified that the attacker was “ a convert ” to Islam. According to him, the attack would be ” linked to several people long suspected of having connections to the Wahhabi movement “, the ultraconservative branch of Islam that dominates Saudi Arabia, some ” converts to islam “.
This attack comes as a surprise in Serbia, a country little used to terrorism and where anti-Semitism historically is very weak, if not non-existent.
Serbian Prime Minister Milos Vucevic condemned the attack, calling it “ heinous terrorist act “. “ This is an act of madness that cannot be attributed to any religion or nation. It is the crime of an individual. ” he said, quoted by the Beta news agency.
The Israeli Foreign Ministry denounced ” an attempted terrorist attack ” near its embassy in Belgrade, specifying in a press release that ” the embassy is closed and no employees were injured “.