A night shift outside Israel’s embassy in the Serbian capital turned violent shortly after midnight on Wednesday. According to Interior Minister Ivica Dačić, a young man ran at an officer of the Gendarmerie, the police force’s elite unit, holding a knife in each hand and shouting “Allahu Akbar”. The officer took a cut to the face, drew his gun and killed the attacker on the spot.
Dačić quickly labelled the incident terrorism. The assailant, he said, was a Serbian citizen under the age of 18 whom the security services had already been watching because he openly supported the Islamic State group. Officials say he had posted the black jihadist banner on Instagram. His identity has not been made public.
Belgrade responded by moving its terror alert to red, the top of the scale. In practice that means tighter checks and a heavier armed police presence at infrastructure sites and anywhere large crowds gather. By Wednesday morning, heavily armed officers were standing in front of the diplomatic mission.
The wounded gendarme is reported to be fine and did not even need to go to hospital, the minister said after visiting him. Israel’s foreign ministry added that no member of its staff was hurt, as the embassy was closed when the assault happened.
Serbia has been here before. Back in the summer of 2024 an attacker shot a crossbow bolt into the neck of a gendarme guarding the same building; the officer survived and shot dead his attacker, a Serbian convert to Islam. This latest attack came barely a day after Israelis voted in a general election whose outcome is still being fought over.
