Bosnia arrests 13-year-old after school shooting wounds teacher

A 13-year-old boy has been arrested in Bosnia after allegedly shooting and wounding a teacher inside an elementary school building, according to police and local officials.

The teacher, a 38-year-old man who also served as the assistant headmaster in Lukavac Elementary School in the northeastern town, sustained serious wounds and was undergoing surgery, police said in a statement on Wednesday.

The assailant was detained after the shooting, the statement added.

The victim was identified as Ismet Osmanovic.

Police released no information about the shooter’s motive, but local officials confirmed the boy was expelled from the school earlier this year for unruly behaviour.

A local politician in Lukavac, Dino Osmanovic, claimed the boy had previously threatened to take revenge for the disciplinary action.

Osmanovic said he notified the police of the danger in late May but was told they had taken “necessary measures, that everything was under control and that they cannot share more information about the case because it involves a juvenile”.

Serbia mass shootings

Wednesday’s school shooting comes after two separate mass shootings in two days rocked neighbouring Serbia last month, killing at least 17 people, including eight children.

In an interview with Al Jazeera after the school shooting in Serbia last month, psychologist Marina Nadejin Simic said that the school shooting was “a red line” for the country.

“Unfortunately, in our society, violence is present everywhere around us and it’s tolerated. In a way, it’s a normalisation of violence … Those kids have become accustomed to living in such surroundings and some of them feel quite bad,” she said.

Adding to the problem is that “a lot of kids are a lot more online than in the real world”, leading to undeveloped emotional and social skills, Nadejin Simic said.

 

Wednesday’s violence has also reverberated in Bosnia where, according to a report by the Small Arms Survey, about 31 of every 100 citizens own a gun in the Balkan nation.

Most of these guns and other weapons were trafficked into the country due to an arms embargo during the war in the 1990s.

Since then, authorities have been trying to address the issue in an effort to tackle gun violence.

Last month, the European Union’s foreign policy chief Josep Borrell also highlighted the importance of controlling arms in the Western Balkans, according to a report by Euronews Albania.

At a meeting with EU officials, he said: “We all know this activity is a great danger to our peace and stability. It’s a multiple threat and increases the risk of terrorist attacks as well.”

The 27-member bloc has so far invested 38 million euros ($41m) focusing on gun control in the Western Balkans.