Shock and dismay across the country after a gunman fatally shot 12 people, including two children, in a western town before killing himself.
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Prime Minister Milojko Spajić said that the government would be looking into a total ban on weapons “because we must ask ourselves after this who should be allowed to have guns in Montenegro," after a gunman fatally shot 12 people, including two children on Wednesday.
At least four others were wounded in the shooting spree in the central city of Cetinje that followed a bar brawl, officials said. This was the second such incident in the town in the past three years.
Police Commissioner Lazar Šćepanović described Wednesday’s shooting as “one of the biggest tragedies in the history of Montenegro.”
He said at a news conference that the victims included seven men, three women and two children, born in 2011 and 2016.
“Most of the victims were people he knew, his closest friends and relatives,” including the shooter’s sister, Šćepanović said. “This criminal act wasn’t planned or organised. It was unpredictable.”
The shooter, identified as 45-year-old Aco Martinović, killed the bar owner, his nephews and Martinović's own family members, officials have said.
Martinović, who first fled after the rampage, was later located and surrounded by police. He died after shooting himself, police said.
Residents of Cetinje, a town of some 17,000 people, said they were stunned.
"I knew all of these people personally, also the attacker. I think when he did that, he was out of his mind," said Vesko Milošević, a retiree from Cetnje. "What do I know, he went from place to place and killed people. Its a catastrophe.”
Police had dispatched a special unit to search for Martinović in the town, which is located about 30 kilometres northwest of Podgorica, the country's capital.
Police said that Martinović had died while being taken to a hospital in the capital and succumbed from the “severity of his injuries”.
Officials have said Martinović was at the bar throughout the day with other guests when the brawl erupted. He then went home, brought back a weapon and opened fire at around 5:30 p.m.
Prosecutor Andrijana Nastić said on Thursday that Martinović committed the murders at several locations during the shooting rampage.
“Further investigation will determine the exact circumstances of the events,” she added.
The government has declared three days of national mourning starting on Thursday, and all planned New Year's festivities have been cancelled throughout the country.
“Instead of holiday joy ... we have been gripped by sadness over the loss of innocent lives,” Montenegro's President Jakov Milatović said in a post on X.
Police have said that Martinović received a suspended sentence in 2005 for violent behaviour and had appealed his latest conviction for illegal weapons possession.
Many people traditionally have weapons in the small Adriatic Sea nation of some 620,000 people.
In August 2022 in Cetinje, Montenegro’s historic capital, an attacker killed 10 people, including two children, before he was shot and killed in an exchange of fire with police and passers-by.