15 held after gun attack on US embassy

SERBIAN police arrested 15 people in raids on suspected radical Islamists yesterday after a lone gunman opened fire with an assault rifle on the United States embassy in neighbouring Bosnia on Friday.

The broad daylight attack in the Bosnian capital paralysed central Sarajevo and saw shopkeepers scrambling for cover as the gunman paced up and down firing on the embassy.

A police sharpshooter eventually wounded him and he was arrested.

One police officer was also wounded in the attack and several bullets struck the wall of the embassy compound.

Police in Serbia said that they had conducted raids in three towns in south- western Serbia, including the mainly Muslim Novi Pazar, the hometown of the gunman identified as 23-year-old Mevludin Jasarevic.

“At 5am this morning, police launched an operation against the extremist Islamic Wahhabi movement in Novi Pazar, Sjenica and Tutin,” Serbian Interior Minister Ivica Dacic said in a statement.

Wahhabism is a strict branch of Islam.

Fifteen people were arrested during the police raid and mobile phones and computers were also seized.

Bosnia’s security minister, Sadik Ahmetovic, said the Bosnian authorities co- ordinated activities with their Serbian counterparts.

“Several locations have been raided and a number of individuals believed to have had links with the perpetrator have been interrogated in Bosnia,” he said.

The state prosecutor, Dubravko Campara, said he had met the gunman but could not provide more detail on his motives in the interest of ongoing investigation.

Serbian media reported police had stepped up security around the US embassy in the capital, Belgrade. The United States ambassador to Bosnia, Patrick Moon, said Federal Bureau of Investigation agents were expected to conduct an investigation into the damage to America’s embassy building.