A 13-year-old who opened fire at his school in Serbia’s capital Belgrade drew sketches of classrooms and made a list of people he intended to target in a meticulously planned attack, police said.
The boy killed eight fellow students and a guard before calling the police and being arrested.
Police said he first killed a school guard and then three students in a hallway. He then entered a history classroom close to the school entrance and opened fire again, according to senior police official Veselin Milic.
While Mr Milic said the boy had planned the attack for a month, sketching classrooms and writing out a list of children he planned to “liquidate”, authorities said they did not know the motive for the shooting.
It is unclear if he shot any of the people named on his list or how many rounds were fired, but police said the boy reloaded the handgun. In addition to the nine killed, six children and a teacher were also taken to hospital.
Authorities declared three days of nationwide mourning, starting on Friday.
Police identified the boy as Kosta Kecmanovic, who attended the Vladislav Ribnikar school, where students range in age from six to 15. Because he is under 14, he cannot face criminal charges, the Belgrade prosecutor’s office said. Social services will determine what happens to him.
He carried two guns belonging to his father — at least one a handgun — and four petrol bombs, officials said.
Interior minister Bratislav Gasic said the weapons were licensed and kept in a safe but the teenager, who had been to shooting ranges, apparently knew the code.
Serbian president Aleksandar Vucic said the boy will be placed in a psychiatric institution. “As of this moment the boy is in a special place and he will be placed in a special department of a psychiatric clinic,” Mr Vucic told reporters. He also said the boy’s parents had been arrested.
Local media footage showed police removing Kecmanovic, whose head was covered, and putting him in a police car. Police sealed off the blocks around the school. Authorities later carried body bags to a waiting van.
Police said they received a call about the shooting at about 8.40am on the first day that classes resumed after a long weekend for the May 1st holiday.
“I was able to hear the shooting. It was non-stop,” said a student who was in a sports class when gunfire broke out in the building. “I didn’t know what was happening. We were receiving some messages on the phone.”
The student described the suspect as a “quiet guy” who had good grades. “He was not so open with everybody. Surely I wasn’t expecting this to happen,” she said.
The security guard was killed while trying to stop the attack, according to the district’s mayor, Milan Nedeljkovic.
“He wanted to prevent a tragedy, which would have been even greater if he had not stood in front of the boy who shot,” Mr Nedeljkovic said in an interview with state media outside the school. “The children are under stress. The school is closed. Something like this has never been recorded in the history of Belgrade schools.”
Milan Milosevic, who said his daughter was in a history class when the shooting took place, told N1 television that he rushed out when he heard what had happened.
“I asked: ‘Where is my child?’ but no one could tell me anything at first,” he said. “Then she called and we found out she was out.
“He [the shooter] fired first at the teacher and then the children who ducked under the desks,” Mr Milosevic quoted his daughter as saying. “She said he was a quiet boy and a good student.”
Mass shootings are extremely rare in Serbia and in the wider Balkan region; none were reported at schools in recent years. In the last mass shooting, a Balkan war veteran in 2013 killed 13 people in a central Serbian village.
Experts, however, have repeatedly warned of the danger posed by the large number of weapons in the country after the wars of the 1990s. - Agencies