Serbia is still in shock after two violent attacks sparked terror in the population.

Seven girls, a boy and a guard of a school in were killed by a 13-year-old student in Belgrade on 3 May. The teenager was placed in a mental health clinic and his father, arrested for teaching him how to use guns.

The following day, a man shot 7 people dead in the town of Mladenovac.

Large funerals happened on the weekend, with hundreds laying flowers and joining in solidarity with families who lost loved ones.

Sources told Evangelical Focus about a Christian worker in Serbia who is a former pupil of the school attacked on Wednesday. She called to pray for the country.

The shootings re-opened the debate about what to do with the large amount of guns and ammunition that still circulate in Serbia following the armed conflicts the country went through in the 1990s.

“Parents sent children to a supposed safe place”

The day of the school attack, May 3, “will remain permanently engraved in the history of Serbian society as the first massacre in one of our schools”, two evangelical leaders in Serbia said. “Parents sent their children to school, as they would every morning, a supposed safe place, unaware some would not see them again”.

Samuil Petrovski (Serbian Evangelical Alliance) and Draško Đenović (Synod of the Evangelical Church of Serbia) told the European Evangelical Alliance that “there is a lot of fear and uncertainty in the wake of these two shootings. Children are afraid to go to school and even churches are rethinking their security”.

They asked to pray for the families of victims, the “children and families who witnessed the massacre and had a close encounter with death”, the medical doctors working with the 21 people wounded, and for “guidance and unity among Serbian churches amidst the fear and insecurity”.

What is next

In the last hours, more suspects have been arrested by the police, following social media messages posted around the times of the shootings.

The government’s Education Minister resigned, and the Serbian Prime Minister, Aleksander Vucic, said would make “whatever possible to make sure that those who have illicit guns give them in. If they do not do so, we will find them, and the consequences will be dire”.

In Serbia, there is an estimated 760,000 guns in the hands of around 400,000 people, making the 6.8 million country one of the highest rates of guns.