Serbian police search for attacker who shot dead one policeman and injured another

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

The incident occurred shortly before 1 a.m. in the western town of Loznica, near the border with Bosnia, Minister Ivica Dacic said. The patrol stopped a car with two occupants, and one of them opened fire as he got out of the vehicle, he added.

The attacker shot one officer in the chest and the other in the shoulder. Both were taken to a local hospital, but one of them died there, Dacis said.

Police have launched a search for the attacker using drones and helicopters. Dacic said the man was born in 1991 and holds a passport from Kosovo, the former province of Serbia that declared independence in 2008.

Further details were not immediately known. The area around the border with Bosnia is known as a smuggling route for migrants who want to reach Western Europe via the Balkans.

At the end of June, an attacker with a crossbow injured a Serbian policeman who was guarding the Israeli embassy in the capital Belgrade.