BELGRADE: An attacker who fired a crossbow at a police officer guarding the Israeli embassy in Belgrade was shot and killed on Saturday in what Interior Minister Ivica Dacic called a terrorist attack against Serbia.
The policeman is in a life-threatening condition and is undergoing surgery, Serbian news agency Tanjug quoted Dacic as saying. No embassy employees were wounded, the Israeli foreign ministry said.
Dacic said the police officer who was attacked was hit in the neck with an arrow and fired several shots at the attacker, killing him.
“This is a terrorist attack against Serbia,” he said in the statement carried by Tanjug.
He said that several people believed to have been linked to the incident had been arrested.
“There are some indications that they (those arrested) are already known to security services and we are talking about the Wahhabi organization, but that is not confirmed,” Dacic said, referring to a strict school of Islam.
Israel’s foreign ministry said that there had been “an attempted terrorist attack in the vicinity of the Israeli embassy in Belgrade.”
“The embassy is closed and no employee of the embassy was injured. The circumstances of the incident are being investigated,” its statement said.
Israel-linked institutions around the world have been on high alert for attacks and protests since Israel launched its war to eliminate Hamas in the Palestinian enclave of Gaza, after the Islamist militant group led deadly attacks on southern Israel on Oct. 7, 2023.
The police officer was in a guard house and the attacker had approached him several times asking him where a museum was. He carried a bag from which at one point he took the crossbow and shot the guard, Dacic said.
Police investigators in white forensic suits surrounded the body of the suspect on the street outside the building, which was swarmed with police vehicles.
In 2009, a Serbian court sentenced four Muslims, followers of the puritanical Sunni Wahhabi sect, to prison for plotting to attack a football stadium in a southern town of Novi Pazar, the capital of Serbia’s Sandzak region, where the majority of the population are moderate Muslims.
Police officer wounded, ‘attacker’ killed in front of Israeli embassy in Belgrade: minister
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Police officer wounded, ‘attacker’ killed in front of Israeli embassy in Belgrade: minister
- The officer “used a weapon in self-defense and defeated the attacker, who died as a result of his injuries”
UN refugee agency chief: ‘Very difficult moment in history’
- According to his agency also known as UNHCR, there are 117.3 million forcibly displaced people around the world from 194 countries
ROME: The first refugee to lead the UN refugee agency has said that the world faces “a very difficult moment in history” and is appealing to a common humanity amid dramatic change.
Repression of immigrants is growing, and the funding to protect them is plummeting.
Without ever mentioning the Trump administration or its policies directly, Barham Salih said his office will have to be inventive to confront the crisis, which includes losing well over $1 billion in US support.
FASTFACT
There are 117.3 million forcibly displaced people around the world from 194 countries.
“Of course it’s a fight, undeniably so, but I think also I’m hopeful and confident that there is enough humanity out there to really enable us to do that,” said Salih, a former president of Iraq.
He was also adamant on the need to safeguard the 1951 refugee convention as the Trump administration campaigns for other governments to join it in upending a decades-old system and redefining asylum rules.
Salih, who took up his role as high commissioner for refugees on Jan. 1, described it as an international legal responsibility and a moral responsibility.
According to his agency also known as UNHCR, there are 117.3 million forcibly displaced people around the world from 194 countries. Salih’s challenge is supporting some 30 million refugees with significantly less funds.
In 2024 and 2025, funding from the US dropped from $2.1 billion to $800 million, and yet the country remains UNHCR’s largest donor.
“Resources made available to helping refugees are being constrained and limited in very, very significant way,” Salih said.
The Trump administration is also reviewing the US asylum system, suspending the refugee program in 2025 and setting a limit for entries to 7,500, mostly white South Africans — a historic low for refugee admittance since the program’s inception in 1980.
The Trump administration also has tightened immigration enforcement as part of its promise to increase deportations, while facing criticism for deportations to third countries and an uproar over two fatal shootings by federal officers and other deaths.
“We have to accept the need for adapting with a new environment in the world,” Salih said.
His agency is seeking to be more cost-effective, “to really deliver assistance to the people who need it, rather than be part of a system that sustains dependency on humanitarian assistance,” he added. Salih has already met Pope Leo XIV at the Vatican. He said he was grateful for the support of the pontiff — the first pope from the US.
“The voice of the church and faith-based organizations in this endeavor is absolutely vital,” Salih said. “His moral support, his voice of the need for supporting refugees and what we do as UNHCR at this moment is very, very important.”
