An armed man killed several people on Wednesday in a restaurant in a village in southern Montenegro, said the Prime Minister. According to the first information communicated by the government and the police, it was a fight which ended badly. turned and the suspect also allegedly killed members of his own family, according to the minister who spoke of a “private” event.
“A terrible tragedy that struck us all took place in the village of Bajice near Cetinje,” Prime Minister Milojko Spajic told Public Radio and Television (RTCG), confirming police information reported by this media. The Minister of the Interior indicated that twelve people were killed, including two minors.
Four seriously injured
However, he said four people seriously injured in the shooting were hospitalized in the capital Podgorica. “Doctors are fighting to save their lives. »
“In the afternoon, in a restaurant in Bajice, AM, 45, killed several people using firearms” then “fled,” the police had previously announced.
The man died after shooting himself in the head, police said.
Police surrounded the fleeing shooter and when they ordered him “to put down his gun, he shot himself in the head,” police chief Lazar Scepanovic told reporters. “We tried to transport him to a hospital, but he succumbed to his injuries,” he said.
Three days of national mourning
The Montenegrin government has declared three days of national mourning, starting Thursday, in connection with “the tragic incident that occurred today in Cetinje.” According to police, the incident was “not the result of a confrontation between groups belonging to organized crime.” Police urged residents to stay at home and said they had deployed special forces to the area.
In 2022 in the same village of Cetinje, a man killed ten residents in broad daylight, including two children, before being shot dead by a passer-by according to the prosecution, in what remains one of the deadliest incidents in the history of this small Balkan country.
Montenegro is plagued by two major scourges, organized crime and corruption, which the authorities have promised to tackle, under pressure from the European Union, which the country would like to join. Mass shootings are rare there, however.
