Serbia

BELGRADE, Serbia (AP) — Serbia’s populist leader has sharply denounced opposition plans to block a key bridge and motorway in Belgrade on Friday to press their demands in the wake of last week’s mass shootings in the Balkan country that left 17 people dead, including many children.

President Aleksandar Vucic said that the planned opposition protest later on Friday amounted to “violence in politics” and “harassment” of citizens. But, Vucic said, police would not intervene to prevent it “unless people’s lives are in danger.”

BELGRADE, Serbia (AP) — At one end of a long avenue leading through the western districts of Belgrade, there is a large and freshly painted mural that reads: Boulevard of Ratko Mladic.

It’s been there for months or even years, regularly renovated and kept in clean blue and white colors, never vandalized or painted over although thousands of people pass it by every day.

BELGRADE, Serbia (AP) — Thousands marched in silence on Monday in Serbia in a major outpouring of grief and anger against the populist government and how it reacted after two mass shootings last week that left 17 people dead and 21 wounded, many of them children.

BELGRADE, May 7 (Xinhua) -- The Serbians and the Chinese gathered at the site of the bombed former Chinese Embassy in the Federal Republic of Yugoslavia in Belgrade on Sunday to mark the 24th anniversary of the killing of three Chinese journalists in the 1999 North Atlantic Treaty Organization (NATO) aggression on Yugoslavia.

BELGRADE, Serbia (AP) — A gunman apparently firing at random killed eight people and wounded 14 in two villages in Serbia, authorities said, shaking a nation still in the throes of grief over a mass shooting a day earlier. Police arrested a suspect Friday after an all-night manhunt.

Serbian President Aleksandar Vucic called the shootings late Thursday an attack on the whole nation — and said the person arrested wore a T-shirt with a pro-Nazi slogan on it but did not shed light on the motive.

BELGRADE, Serbia (AP) — Serbian police on Thursday urged citizens to lock up their guns after a 13-year-old boy used his father’s guns in a shooting rampage that killed eight of his fellow students and a school guard, sending shock waves through the nation.

Thousands of people in Belgrade and other cities throughout the Balkan country lined up to lay flowers, light candles and leave toys to commemorate the victims of the shooting that happened in a central district in the Serbian capital on Wednesday morning.

BELGRADE, Serbia (AP) — A teenage boy opened fire in a school in central Belgrade Wednesday, killing eight children and a school guard, police said. Six more children and a teacher were injured and hospitalized.

Police identified the shooter by his initials, K.K., and said he had opened fire with his father’s gun. The statement said he was a student at the school and was born in 2009. He was arrested in the school yard, police said.

Police said they received a call about the shooting in the Vladislav Ribnikar primary school around 8:40 a.m.

BELGRADE, April 28. /TASS/: Serbia’s President Aleksandar Vucic has promised the Serbs that the country will not join NATO as long as he remains the head of state.

"Serbia today is one of the few countries with its own policies. It’s independent and free-thinking," Vucic said while addressing a crowd of local residents in Sokobanja on Friday. "As long as I am president, and this will [last] another four years, and as the commander-in-chief, I guarantee you that Serbia will not join NATO or any other military bloc."

BELGRADE, April 25. /TASS/: Serbian President Aleksandar Vucic pledged on Tuesday a revision of his country’s attitude toward Ukraine following yesterday’s vote on Kosovo’s membership in the Council of Europe.

BELGRADE, April 12. /TASS/: Serbian Foreign Minister Ivica Dacic dismissed as groundless allegations that Serbia is making deliveries of weapons to Ukraine, the Balkan country’s foreign ministry said on Wednesday.