Pressmediaofindia
Related Articles
03-01-2025
MONTENEGRO: A gunman has shot dead at least 10 people, including two children, in southern Montenegro on Wednesday, police say.
At least some of the deaths happened inside a restaurant in the Cetinje area following a verbal argument between guests, according to a police official quoted by public broadcaster RTCG.
It was later confirmed that the attacker, named as Aleksandar Martinovic, had killed himself.
The government has declared three days of national mourning from Thursday with Prime Minister Milojko Spajic describing the shooting as a “terrible tragedy”.
The gunman killed members of his own family, two of the restaurant owner’s children and also the owner, according to Interior Minister Danilo Saranovic.
Saranovic called the incident a “consequence of disturbed interpersonal relations”, according to AFP news agency.
Four people were in a life-threatening condition in hospital after being seriously wounded in the shooting, the agency reported the prime minister as saying.
Martinovic, 45, fled the scene of the attack but later killed himself after being surrounded by police who asked him to drop his weapon, a police official said.
The man had previously been arrested for weapons possession, media reports.
Mass shootings are comparatively rare in the small Balkan nation.
A gunman killed at least 10 people in a rampage on a small town in Montenegro on Wednesday, police said, one of the tiny Balkan nation’s worst mass killings.
A 45-year-old man, identified by police as Aleksandar Martinovic, was on the run after opening fire at a restaurant in the town of Cetinje where he killed four people.
The shooter moved on to three other locations, gunning down a family member, two children and three other people, police said. Four more people suffered life-threatening injuries.
The suspect, who media reports said had a history of illegal weapons possession, was at large around Cetinje, a small valley town surrounded by rugged hills some 38 km (23.6 miles) west of the Montenegrin capital Podgorica.
A reporter with the state-run broadcaster RTCG said police deployed a drone with thermal vision to search for the suspect. Special police and anti-terrorist units were also searching for the suspect in the hills.
“The perimeter is narrowed. … We will do everything to put this person under control and apprehend him,” police director Lazar Scepanovic said.
He said the suspect was thought to have been drinking heavily before the shooting. Montenegrin Prime Minister Milojko Spajic said there had been a brawl where pistols were fired.
Police said the shooting was not thought to be connected to organized crime.
Mass shootings are comparatively rare in Montenegro, which has a deeply rooted gun culture. In 2022, also in Cetinje, 11 people, including two children and a gunman, were killed in a mass attack.
Wednesday’s incident shocked the country of 605,000 people. Spajic called the shootings a “terrible tragedy” and declared three days of national mourning.
Montenegro’s president, Jakov Milatovic, said he was “horrified” by the attack. “We are praying and hoping for the recovery of the wounded,” Milatovic said in a statement.
Cetinje was eerily quiet with its snow-covered streets empty except for law enforcement. Police urged people to remain inside their homes and video showed police officers cordoning off a neighborhood where lamp posts were adorned with festive lights. (Int’l Monitoring Desk)
