Arrest made after second mass killing in Serbia in two days

Serbian police arrested the suspected perpetrator after another violent attack that left eight people dead near the capital Belgrade in the second mass killing in as many days.

The arrest took place in the central Serbian town of Kragujevac, the interior ministry confirmed on Friday.

In the second mass shooting in just two days, at least eight people were killed and 14 others injured by a man who opened fire late Thursday with a rapid-fire rifle in the village of Dubona, some 50 kilometres south of Serbia's capital.

The suspected 21-year-old perpetrator then fled the scene but police located his whereabouts and surrounded him.

The authorities had launched a large-scale manhunt Thursday night. More than 600 police officers, including members of the anti-terrorist unit, were deployed on Friday morning with helicopters, drones and thermal imaging cameras, Tanjug reported.

The town of Kragujevac, where the perpetrator was arrested, is about 100 kilometres from the scene of the crime.

The victims had been sitting on a bench in the village centre when the attacker fired at them from a vehicle, the Blic newspaper reported. A policeman and his sister were reportedly among the victims.

The motive for the killings was unknown.

Serbian Interior Minister Bratislav Gašić, who rushed to the scene, described the crime as a "terrorist act," without elaborating.

The assailant in Thursday's shooting incident was identified as a young man born in 2002.

Eyewitnesses cited by Serbian media said perpetrator got into an argument with a group of mostly young people marking Orthodox St. George's Day in a schoolyard, commemorating the victims of the Belgrade school massacre.

The perpetrator initially left the scene but returned a little later in a car, from which he is said to have shot at the group. The man then fled.

On Friday morning, the security forces arrested the alleged perpetrator on the outskirts of Kragujevac, where the assailant had been hiding at the home of his grandfather, who was also arrested by the police.

During a search of the property, police found a machine-gun, ammunition and explosive devices. Nothing was initially known about the young man's motives.

Serbian President Aleksandar Vucic described the bloody deed as a "terrorist act." All of Serbia was attacked, he said at a press conference in Belgrade on Friday morning.

Serbia was shaken by another massacre in a Belgrade school only on Wednesday when a 13-year-old student shot dead eight classmates and a security guard. Six other students and a teacher were injured.

The police had subsequently taken him into custody. The perpetrator is not yet of legal age in Serbia.

On Thursday, the government had placed a moratorium on issuing gun licenses and agreed to more thorough controls on owners of approved guns. "We will completely disarm Serbia," Vucic vowed.

In fact, the number of firearms owned by civilians in Serbia is estimated to be enormous.

While the number of legally registered weapons has fallen from more than 900,000 to just over 700,000 in recent years, experts from the Small Arms Survey research project, for example, suspect that around one million are illegally in the hands of citizens. Serbia has 6.6 million inhabitants.