Serbian President Aleksandar Vucic today announced a raft of tough measures to improve gun control and beef up security in the Balkan country’s schools following two massacres this week that killed a total of 17 people, eight of whom were students.

“We will proceed with an almost complete disarmament in Serbia,” Vucic noted in a news conference broadcast live hours after the second massacre in two days in the country, in which a young man killed 8 people in three villages near Belgrade.

The Serbian president has proposed a moratorium on gun licenses regardless of the type of weapon, an “almost complete disarmament” in Serbia, with a review of licenses for small arms, other than hunting, and more frequent medical and psychological checks of gun owners, which will aim to reduce of their number from about 400,000 “to not more than 30,000 to 40,000”. He also noted that the government will hire 1,200 additional police officers to improve security in the country’s schools.

Vucic also described yesterday’s massacre in central Serbia as a “terrorist attack” and “an attack against all of us”.

In the country of approximately 6.8 million inhabitants, over 765,000 guns are legally owned by citizens. Of these, approximately 360,000 are estimated to be hunting, according to the data presented by the Serbian president.

The government will also attack the problem of illegal gun ownership, he stressed.

After 8 students and a security guard were killed and 6 students and a teacher were injured at a central Belgrade school on Wednesday by a 13-year-old student, a 21-year-old man opened fire on Thursday night, killing 8 others with an automatic weapon and injuring 14. in three villages of Mladenovac district, located about 60 kilometers south of Belgrade.

According to media reports, the victims of the second massacre are mainly young people.

The suspect was arrested this morning in Kragujevac district, central Serbia, after a manhunt that lasted throughout the night.