Two suspected Islamic extremists detained after attack outside Israeli embassy in Belgrade

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

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-defense and the attacker later died.

The assailant, from Mladenovac, near Belgrade, lived in Novi Pazar, a historical and political center 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 tells the state-run RTS broadcaster on Sunday.

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

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