The government of Montenegro has declared three days of national mourning for the victims of a mass shooting in town of Cetinje that has shattered the community.
The shooting on August 12 took the lives of 11 people, including the attacker.
The three-day nationwide mourning period, which will last through August 15, was announced on August 13 as new details about the shooting came to light.
Among the dead were two children. Six people were wounded and were still being treated. Three of them have life-threatening injuries.
Police director Zoran Brdanin said it was still not clear what motivated the attack, which began around 3:30 p.m. when a 34-year-old man from Cetinje, identified only by the initials V.B., used a hunting rifle to shoot at a family who were tenants in his house.
The two children, one aged 8 and the other 11, and their mother were the first shot.
The gunman then went into the streets and door-to-door, shooting people using the same firearm. He killed seven more people and injured six before he was shot dead, Brdanin said.
One police officer was seriously wounded in an exchange of fire, Brdanin added.
A police statement said law enforcement officers sent to the scene came under fire from the attacker and responded by firing at him at least 20 times and seriously injuring him.
“It is still being investigated if he died as the result of the serious injury (by police) or as the result of being shot at by a local citizen,” the statement said.
The prosecutor coordinating the investigation, Andrijana Nastic, told journalists on August 12 that the gunman was killed by a passerby and that a police officer was among the wounded.
A government statement said flags will be flown at half-staff on all state buildings and public institutions and public entertainment programs will not be held during the period.
A visit by Patriarch Porfirije, head of the Serbian Orthodox Church, to another town in Montenegro has been postponed out of respect for the mourning period, the Metropolitanate of Montenegro and the Littoral announced.
Porfirije's visit to the town of Herceg Novi has been pushed back to August 29-30 from its originally planned dates of August 14-15, the church leadership said. The visit was planned on the occasion of the 640th anniversary of the founding of Herceg Novi.