Serbian police kill armed man linked to Israel embassy attack in shootout

A man has been shot dead by Serbian police, the interior minister says, after being connected with the attacker behind a crossbow shooting at the Israeli embassy in Belgrade in June.

Interior minister Ivica Dacic says the man fired shots toward the police near the southern city of Novi Pazar late yesterday and refused to surrender.

“During the arrest, he resisted, fired three to four shots at the police, and members of the Special Anti-Terrorist Unit neutralised him,” Dacic tells local media.

He adds that the man had previously been convicted and jailed for terrorist offences.

The police operation took place in the village of Hotkovo, near Novi Pazar — a historical and political center of Serbia’s Bosniak Muslim minority.

Police said the man was wanted in connection with another man killed by police in Belgrade on June 29, after shooting a police officer in the neck with a crossbow outside the Israeli embassy.

The attack in the Serbian capital was characterized as a “terrorist act” by officials, who described the assailant as a Serbian convert to Islam.

The man killed Saturday night was the landlord of the June attacker, police say, who had lived in his apartment in Novi Pazar prior to his attack at the embassy.

He had been on the run since the June attack, the police minister states.

Local media describe the man killed in Novi Pazar as a “well-known follower” of the Wahhabi movement — a purist form of Islam that dominates in Saudi Arabia.