Vucic: Horrible terrorist attack outside parliament building

BELGRADE - In an extraordinary public address, Serbian President Aleksandar Vucic said on Wednesday a horrible terrorist attack on people and property had taken place outside the parliament building in central Belgrade earlier in the day.

Speaking at the Palace of Serbia, Vucic said 70-year-old Vladan Andjelkovic, with a registered residence in the Belgrade municipality of Stari Grad, had committed "a horrible terrorist attack on other people and other persons' property, causing general danger."

"That is my political assessment, as well as my assessment as a jurist," Vucic said, adding that a final legal qualification of the act was up to the competent prosecutors' offices.

"If I am right, it will be done by the Prosecutor's Office for Organised Crime, and if I am not, it will definitely be done by the Higher Public Prosecutor's Office in Belgrade," Vucic said.

He said the perpetrator of the attack, a pensioner since 2009, had a Crvena zastava M99 pistol registered to his name since 1993.

Andjelkovic was arrested after shooting and wounding another man, who was then hospitalised at the Emergency Medical Centre.

After the shooting, one of the tents outside the parliament building caught fire.

The flame has meanwhile been contained by firefighters.

In footage made immediately after his arrest, Andjelkovic can be heard saying that he does not know the people who were on the scene and that he had wanted the police to kill him as he was "no longer able to live."

After visiting the wounded man at the Emergency Medical Centre, Health Minister Zlatibor Loncar said he remained in a life-threatening condition and was about to undergo complex surgery.

The minister said the victim had been shot just because he was "fighting for a Serbia without blockades."