Gunman kills 2 Bosnian soldiers; injures 3 civilians

The attacker, armed with an automatic rifle, killed two soldiers in a betting shop then shot at a passing bus. The bus driver and two passengers were injured by broken glass, he added.

The attack happened in the Sarajevo suburb of Rajlovac, opposite the gate of an army barracks.

Witnesses at the scene said the attacker appeared to be a follower of the ultra-conservative Salafi Muslim movement in Bosnia, but Nefic could not confirm the reports.

The reasons for the attack are unknown but television N1 reported that the attacker shouted the Islamist slogan “Allahu Akbar” before shooting the soldiers.

“We still have no confirmation that this was a terrorist attack, we hope it was not”, Perica Stanic, director of the State Investigation and Protection Agency, SIPA, told the media.

In the past few hours the police had surrounded one house in the Sokolje neighbourhood.

Nefic said the police could not comment until the investigation was completed. After hearing a detonation, they then discovered his body, Sarajevo police commissioner Vahid Cosic said.

The two soldiers killed were identified as Armin Salkic, 26, and Nedeljko Radic, 34, Bosnia Today reported.

Muslims make up about 40 percent of Bosnia’s 3.8 million people while the rest of the Balkan country’s population is mostly Serbian Orthodox or Catholic. The two were reportedly good friends.

The attack comes two days before the 20th anniversary of the Dayton Accords, a 1995 pact which ended an inter-ethnic war in Bosnia, Croatia and Serbia.