- author, Alex Phillips
- role, BBC News
-
A police officer was injured in a crossbow attack outside the Israeli embassy in the Serbian capital, Belgrade.
Interior Minister Ivica Dacic told reporters that police then shot and killed the gunman.
Dacic said the assailant, who authorities said was a Serb, shot the officer in the neck with an arrow.
Authorities said the officer underwent surgery and is not in serious condition.
Serbian broadcaster B92 quoted Dacic as saying the attacker approached a small building in front of the Israeli embassy at about 11am (9am GMT) and asked about the museum.
The man then opened the door of a small building, pulled out a crossbow and shot at officers, who returned fire and killed the gunman about 30 minutes later, Dacic said.
Serbian authorities told AFP that the gunman was born in 1999 in the town of Mladenovac, about 30 miles from the capital.
He then moved to Novi Pazar, the cultural centre of the Bosniak Muslim minority, and converted to Islam, according to the report.
Dacic said the case had been taken over by a special prosecutor and several other people had been arrested as a precautionary measure.
The interior minister suggested the attack could have been part of a larger threat, but Serbian Prime Minister Milos Vucevic called it a “personal crime”.
In comments carried by the Beta news agency, he described the incident as “an act of madness that cannot be attributed to any religion or state.”
Both the Prime Minister and the Home Secretary described the incident as an “act of terrorism”.
The Israeli Foreign Ministry said the embassy was closed at the time of the incident and that no staff were injured.
The incident in Belgrade was not the first apparent attempt to attack an Israeli embassy since October 7, when Hamas launched an unprecedented attack on southern Israel and Israel launched its campaign to destroy Hamas.
