Three employees of a high school were killed Wednesday in the western Bosnian town of Sanski Most when another employee shot them and then attempted suicide.
Una-sana canton police spokesman, Adnan Beganovic, said that on Wednesday morning the police were notified that a man had opened fire at the school with an automatic rifle.
The principal of the school is among those killed.
The perpetrator “tried to commit suicide and was seriously injured,” spokesman Beganovic said, adding that the suspect was transferred for emergency treatment to the nearby city of Banja Luka.
The police said that they are conducting investigations into the possible motives of the incident.
The school had not yet reopened for classes as it is the summer vacation period.
Regional television N1, citing witnesses, said the attacker, a technical employee, had a history of disputes with school leaders. The Reuters news agency was unable to confirm such claims.
Mass shootings are relatively rare in the Western Balkans, which is littered with weapons left over from the wars of the 1990s.
According to a 2010 study by the United Nations Development Program, in Bosnia of about 3.5 million people, there were about 750,000 illegal guns in the hands of citizens.
In July, a war veteran in neighboring Croatia shot five people, including his mother, at a nursing home and wounded six others.
In May 2023, in Serbia, a teenager opened fire in a school with his father's gun, killing nine children and a school guard, while a day later a 20-year-old killed nine people and wounded 12 in a city not far from Belgrade.
