Sniper kills Serb PM Djindjic
Wednesday, March 12, 2003 Posted: 9:07 AM EST (1407 GMT)
BELGRADE, Serbia (CNN) – Serbian Prime Minister Zoran Djindjic, who played a key role in the overthrow of Slobodan Milosevic, has been shot dead by a sniper.
Djindic, 50, was shot twice in front of the main government building in Belgrade on Wednesday. He was taken to hospital in the Serb capital where he underwent emergency surgery but doctors were unable to save his life.
Journalist Dusan Radulovic told CNN the prime minister had been shot twice in the stomach and chest at 1 p.m. (1200 GMT). Two snipers are suspected of having been involved.
Another person was wounded in the shooting in front of a government building in Belgrade, police said.
Officers were stopping cars and searching them in the area around the shooting. There are reports that arrests had been made.
An emergency session of parliament was called after the shooting.
Officials are speculating that the shooting could be linked to a crime wave in the country and the government’s efforts to stamp out crime.
Djindic had put himself out on a limb to meet Western demands for aid by handing over other war criminals to the Hague. His reformist pro-Western stance drew a lot of opposition from many Serbian nationalists and created a lot of enemies.
Last month, he appeared to have been targeted when a truck suddenly cut into the lane in which his motorcade was traveling to Belgrade’s airport.
His vehicle narrowly avoided a collision, and Djindjic later dismissed the incident as a “futile effort” that could not stop democratic reforms.
“It was an assassination attempt after all,” the Politika daily newspaper’s front-page story said in reference to the incident.
CNN’s Chief International Correspondent Christiane Amanpour said: “This is a very, very severe blow to all those in the international community trying to engage with Serbia.”
She added that Djindjic was “aware of his own vulnerability.”
“He has talked many times of threats to his own life.”
Amanpour said Djindjic has been an “emblem of democracy…he has played a key and dramatic role in bringing his country into the democratic world…a courageous man.”
Serbia is one of the two republics in the nation of Serbia and Montenegro, previously called Yugoslavia.