A man armed with a crossbow injured a police officer outside the Israeli embassy in Belgrade, Serbia, on Saturday before being shot dead. The Interior Minister described it as a terrorist act linked to “Wahhabism.”
The worst was narrowly avoided in Belgrade. The Serbian capital was the scene of an attack this Saturday morning against a member of the police. A man with a crossbow injured a police officer in front of the Israeli embassy.
Around 11 a.m. local time, an “unknown person (…) shot a member of the security forces, who was providing security for the Israeli embassy, with a crossbow and hit him in the neck” , said Ivica Dačić, the Serbian Interior Minister.
The police officer “used a weapon in self-defense” against the attacker, who “died from his injuries,” he added in a statement.
The preferred terrorist track
Describing the attack as “a terrorist act directed against the Serbian state,” the Balkan minister then told journalists that it was “linked to several people long suspected of having connections with the Wahhabi movement.” It is an ultraconservative branch of Islam which dominates in Saudi Arabia, and which claims to advocate “a return to the practices in force in the Muslim community of the Prophet Muhammad and his first successors or caliphs”.
Several people were arrested as a precaution and the alert level was raised in Belgrade, the Interior Minister said.
The officer’s injury was serious enough to require hospitalization for surgery.
