Two detained after attack outside Israeli embassy in Belgrade

Two men were remanded in custody after a Serbian police officer killed a man who shot him with a crossbow outside the Israeli embassy in Belgrade in a “targeted terrorist act”, a minister said Sunday.

The assailant, whom the police identified as being a “convert” to Islam, shot the officer while he was on duty in front of the Israeli embassy early Saturday.

The policeman opened fire in self-defence and the attacker later died.

The assailant, from Mladenovac, near Belgrade, lived in Novi Pazar, a historical and political centre of Serbia’s Bosniak Muslim minority, police said.

Early indications connected the attack with people suspected of being linked to the ultra-conservative Wahhabist branch of Islam that dominates in Saudi Arabia, the authorities said.

They added a number of people known to the security services were suspected of being linked to the attack.

“Searches were conducted at several locations in Serbia, dozens of people were questioned”, Interior Minister Ivica Dacic told the state-run RTS broadcaster on Sunday.

The prosecutors will establish whether they were linked with the “targeted terrorist attack”, he added.

“What is indisputable about all those people is that they belong to the Wahhabi extremist movement.”

Two men were remanded in custody, the minister said.

Security was stepped up to the highest level throughout the country and the police operation was continuing, Dacic said.

“It is an operation against extremists and terrorists, people directly involved in the attack, but …. also against those for whom there are indications they might belong to terrorist groups”.

Israel’s Foreign Minister Israel Katz on Saturday thanked Serbian authorities for their “strong support and cooperation following the attempted terror act on the Embassy of Israel in Belgrade today”.

“Terrorism cannot be tolerated!”, he said on X.

Israeli ambassador to Serbia Yahel Vilan on Sunday visited the wounded officer in a Belgrade hospital.

Serbia has continued arms sales to Israel since Hamas’s October 7 attack on southern Israel, which claimed 1,195 lives, mostly of civilians, according to an AFP tally based on Israeli figures.

The health ministry in Hamas-run Gaza said Saturday that at least 37,834 people have been killed in the Israeli response.