Serbian villager shoots dead 13 relatives, neighbours

BELGRADE: A Serbian war veteran on Tuesday went from house to house in his village near Belgrade, shooting dead 13 relatives and neighbours -- including his son, his mother and a two-year-old child, police said.

It was the worst such incident in two decades in the Balkan country, where the government announced Wednesday would be a day of national mourning.

The 60-year-old, identified as Ljubisa Bogdanovic, shot most of his victims in the head as they slept before trying to kill himself and his wife.

Both were seriously wounded along with a third person, who later died in a hospital, Serbian police chief Milorad Veljovic told reporters at the scene labeling the crime "monstrous."

He said the victims who died -- six men, six women and the child -- include Bogdanovic's mother and his 42-year-old son.

"Twelve people were killed on the spot while the 13th died in hospital," said Veljovic.

According to the victims' neighbours the killed child was a boy. Most of the victims were Bogdanovic's relatives.

The motive for the attack in the village of Velika Ivanca, located about 50 kilometers (30 miles) south of Belgrade, was not immediately clear.

Bogdanovic went house to house at 5:00 am local time (0300 GMT) methodically shooting his victims in five houses located on a hill on the outskirts of the village, police said. The houses are only some 10 metres (32 feet) away from each other.

He is thought to have first killed his son and mother, then wounded his wife, before continuing on his spree and turning the gun on himself when a police patrol arrived.

Residents of the village of about 1,700 inhabitants were in shock Tuesday and some wept as they tried to understand the reason behind the killings.

Neighbours said Bogdanovic, who fought as a Serb soldier during the 1990s war in Croatia and had a firearms license, lost his job as a labourer last year. He then became a farmer.

"I had a feeling that I was dreaming. When I woke up I saw my mother, killed at the house's entrance door," Aleksandar Stekic, told reporters.

He was sleeping in another room while his mother was killed and his father was at work.

"I run to the first neighbour and I saw again a killed woman at the entrance ... I was scared I run towards my grand-mother's house but I saw another neighbour killed," the 29-year-old recalled with tears in his eyes.

Police briefly handcuffed him as they suspected he was the perpetrator.

Despite the tragedy, Stekic described the killer as a "good man."

"He wouldn't hurt a fly ... I don't know what has happened."

Visibly shocked villagers echo his view saying the gunman was the "best neighbour," a "hard-working, always ready to help."

Neighbours said Bogdanovic's father had committed suicide when he was a child while some of his family members had undergone psychiatric treatment in the past.

The killer's brother Radmilo Bogdanovic, whose house sits on a hill facing the crime scene, insisted that "nothing could have hinted to this tragedy".

"I ask myself only one thing: why, why he has done this? How could he do it, how?!" the 62-year-old told AFP, sobbing in the garden of his yellow-brick house strewn with children's toys.

"He was a picture of honesty, as a child he was fearful... I don't understand what has happened to him... He was a normal man, something must have broken him ... the whole village is shocked."

Bogdanovic, his eyes red from crying, remembered that his brother was affected by the events of the 1991-1995 war in Croatia in which he took part.

"Whenever I raised the issue, he would always reply 'May God save you from living what we went through'."

In a similar attack in 2007, a gunman killed nine people and wounded two in the village of Jabukovac, in eastern Serbia. (AFP)