Serbian police searching for assailant who shot and killed 1 police officer and wounded another

BELGRADE, Serbia — An assailant stopped by a patrol in a Serbian border town opened fire on police officers early Thursday, killing one and wounding another, the interior minister said.

The shooting happened just before 1 a.m. in the western town of Loznica, near the border with Bosnia, Interior Minister Ivica Dačić said. The patrol stopped a car with two people inside, and one of them opened fire while stepping out of the vehicle, he added.

The assailant shot one officer in the chest and the other in the shoulder. Both were transferred to the local hospital, but one of them died there, Dačić said.

Police have launched a search for the assailant using drones and helicopters. Dačić said that police were still trying to determine the identity of the suspect. A passport issued in Kosovo and a German identification card were found at the scene, police said.

Dačić added that the attack could be a “terrorist attack" by people from Kosovo, Serbia's former province that declared independence in 2008. Belgrade doesn't recognize Kosovo's independence. Tensions in relations still persist, long after a 1998-99 conflict that killed around 13,000 people.

“It cannot be accidental. It is an organized attack,” he said in a statement provided by the Interior Ministry. “The organized crime prosecutor will look into this case as a terrorist attack by (ethnic) Albanian people from Kosovo with certain goals."

He didn't elaborate or offer any evidence for those claims. In Kosovo, Prime Minister Albin Kurti warned against politization of the shooting, saying "it needs to be dealt with in a professional and legal way.”

Serbian media have published a photo of the suspected shooter, but Dačić said the suspect might have taken his brother's passport. Reports said that a heavy police presence was in the area, where some roads were blocked. A search was launched across the border in Bosnia in case the suspect managed to flee there.

The zone around the border with Bosnia is known as a smuggling route for migrants trying to reach Western Europe through the Balkans.

In late June, an attacker with a crossbow wounded a Serbian police officer guarding the Israeli Embassy in the capital, Belgrade.