Three people were killed at the high school in Sanski Most in western Bosnia when the janitor opened fire with an automatic weapon before attempting to commit suicide, the police announced yesterday.
The attacker killed the school's principal, a secretary and an English teacher who had recently retired and was at the school to help the replacement teacher take over the job, police said.
No children were killed or injured in the attack. The shooting happened during the summer vacation, but some students were at school for remedial exams, said the director of the cantonal police, Amel Kozlica.
The attacker, whom the police identified as school janitor Mehmed Vukalić, tried to commit suicide after the attack, during which he injured his chest with a firearm. Doctors from the hospital in Banja Luka, where he was transferred, told N1 television that he is conscious and stable.
Vukalić, as reported by local media, has had disagreements with the school's management for some time and previously complained about discrimination.
Sanski Most, a town of about 40 inhabitants, was in shock yesterday.
"We are trying to understand why this happened", Mayor Faris Hasanbegović said at the press conference. "There is no excuse for this," he said.
Some employees at the school told N1 television that Vukalić was dissatisfied with his job as a janitor and that he suffered from post-traumatic stress disorder (PTSD) after the war in Bosnia and Herzegovina in the 1990s, which is why he was often absent.
The Western Balkans is flooded with weapons that remained in private hands after the wars of the 1990s, the British agency Reuters points out.
In July, a war veteran in neighboring Croatia killed five people, including his mother, and wounded six others in a nursing home.
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