Montenegro began three days of national mourning on Thursday, after the shooting started the day before in a restaurant in the south of the country by a drunken man, which left twelve people dead, including two children.
“Twelve people were killed, including two children,” prosecutor Andrijana Nastic told journalists on Thursday, after a previous report showing at least ten deaths. The murderer, aged 45, committed suicide by shooting himself in the head while he was surrounded by police.
The drama began around 4:30 p.m. GMT in a restaurant in the village of Bajice, near the town of Cetinje. The man “after arguing with a customer with whom he had spent a large part of the day, and having drunk large quantities of alcohol, returned home, took a weapon and killed four people,” said police chief Lazar Scepanovic.
The victims were killed in five different locations, according to the prosecutor. The murderer notably killed a member of his own family, the owner of the restaurant and two of his children, aged 10 and 13.
Four people were also seriously injured and taken to a hospital in the capital, Podgorica.
As of Thursday morning, three of them were still in critical condition while the fourth, who suffered a head injury, was in very critical condition, hospital director Aleksandar Radovic told reporters.
The perpetrator of the shooting was able to be located and surrounded after several hours of tracking by the police and the army. When the officers asked him “to put down his gun, he shot himself in the head,” Mr. Scepanovic said. “We tried to transport him to a hospital, but he succumbed to his injuries,” he said.
The streets of Cetinje and Bajice were deserted Thursday morning, while a police patrol was stationed in front of the attacker’s house at the entrance to the village of Bajice, an AFP photographer noted.
Armes
Referring to “a fight in a restaurant, during which weapons were drawn, and which degenerated”, Prime Minister Milojko Spajic announced on Wednesday evening new restrictions to come concerning the possession of firearms.
“This tragedy raises the question of who can have weapons in Montenegro,” he added.
The National Security Council is due to meet on Friday to discuss “challenges in the detection and seizure of illegal weapons” as well as the recruitment of additional police officers, the government said in a statement.
The police assured that this shooting was “not the result of a confrontation between groups belonging to organized crime”.
Organized crime and corruption have long plagued Montenegro, and the town of Cetinje has been particularly hard hit in recent months.
In June, two people died and three were injured there in an explosion – members of a criminal group, according to police. Among the injured were two other suspected gang members, as well as a female bystander.
After this explosion, the government promised to attack organized crime. But at the end of September, another member of a mafia clan was killed, again in Cetinje, the former royal capital nestled in the hollow of a valley. He was shot dead by a sniper while sitting in his garden.
According to the Small Arms Survey (SAS), a Swiss research program, around 245,000 firearms are in circulation in Montenegro – for a population of 630,000 inhabitants.
“Our thoughts are with the families who lost loved ones and the residents of Cetinje this evening. All of Montenegro feels and shares your pain. We pray for the recovery of all the injured,” the country’s president, Jakov, wrote on Wednesday on X Milatovic.
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