Serbia school shooter had list of students to target: Police

A 13-year-old who opened fire Wednesday at his school in Serbia’s capital drew sketches of classrooms and wrote a list of people he intended to target in a meticulously planned attack, police said. He killed eight fellow students and a school guard before being arrested. The shooter first killed a guard at the school in central Belgrade and then three students in a hallway, according to senior police official Veselin Milic. He then entered a history classroom — apparently choosing it simply because it was close to the entrance — and opened fire again, Milic said. The assailant called police himself when the attack was over, though authorities received a call reporting the shooting two minutes earlier. A father of a student said the shooter entered his daughter’s classroom, firing at her teacher and then her classmates as they ducked under their desks. Most students at the school were able to flee through a back door, according to a local official. Authorities declared three days of nationwide mourning, starting Friday. Mass shootings are extremely rare in Serbia and in the wider Balkan region; none were reported at schools in recent years. In the last mass shooting, a Balkan war veteran in 2013 killed 13 people in a central Serbian village. Experts, however, have repeatedly warned of the danger posed by the large number of weapons in the country after the wars of the 1990s. They also note that decades of instability stemming from the conflicts as well as the ongoing economic hardship could trigger such outbursts. Police identified the shooter as Kosta Kecmanovic, who attended the Vladislav Ribnikar school, where students would typically range in age from 6 to 15.