What happened?
The drama began this Wednesday, January 1 around 4:30 p.m. GMT in a restaurant in the village of Bajice, near the town of Cetinje in Montenegro.
“After having an argument with a customer with whom he had spent a large part of the day, and while he had drunk large quantities of alcohol”a man “went home, took a gun and killed four people”, said police chief Lazar Scepanovic.
What is the outcome?
“Twelve people were killed, including two children“, prosecutor Andrijana Nastic declared this Thursday, after a previous report showing at least ten deaths.
The victims were killed in five different placesaccording 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.
Who is the shooter?
The perpetrator of the shooting, aged 45, 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 weapon, he shot in the head“, said police chief Lazar Scepanovic.
“We tried to transport him to a hospital, but he succumbed to his injuries”he clarified.
What is the motive?
The police assured that this shooting was not “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.
What does the government say?
“Our thoughts this evening are with the families who lost loved ones and the residents of Cetinje. All of Montenegro feels and shares your pain. We pray for the recovery of all the injured”wrote the country’s president, Jakov Milatovic, on Wednesday on X.
Evoking “a fight in a restaurant, during which weapons were drawn, and which degenerated”, Prime Minister Milojko Spajic announced Wednesday evening new restrictions coming on gun ownership.
“This tragedy raises the question of who can have weapons in Montenegro”he added.
The National Security Council is scheduled to meet this Friday to discuss “challenges in the detection and seizure of illegal weapons” as well as recruitment of additional police officersindicated the government in a press release.
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.
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