Three employees were shot dead Wednesday at a high school in northwest Bosnia by a co-worker who then tried to kill himself, police said.

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The shooting occurred around 10:00 am (0800 GMT) in Sanski Most as teachers met to prepare the upcoming school year and no students were present, local media reported.

The violence comes after high profile mass shootings in other Balkan nations in recent years, including back-to-back attacks that rocked Serbia in 2023. “This man used a military firearm, an automatic rifle, to kill three school employees and tried to kill himself,” Adnan Beganovic, a police spokesman, told national radio.

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Beganovic added that the principal, a secretary and an English teacher were killed. The assailant was seriously wounded and transferred to a hospital in Banja Luka in the north, he said.

Police did not provide a motive for the attack, with media saying that the man was a janitor facing disciplinary proceedings.

Mass demonstrations erupted in Serbia last year after 19 people were killed in less than 48 hours, including 10 at an elementary school in Belgrade.

Serbia has one of the highest gun ownership rates in the world, with 39 firearms for every 100 civilians, according to the Small Arms Survey project.

The shootings sparked anti-government protests as tens of thousands called for the resignation of top officials and an end to the glorification of violence and gangster culture in the media.

A gunman killed five residents and one employee at a Croatian nursing home in July, one of nation’s worst shootings since it declared independence in 1991.

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