(AFP) --- A man who killed two members
of Bosnia 's armed forces in Sarajevo was linked to
Islamist circles and almost certainly committed a "terrorist act," a
minister said Thursday.
The pair were
killed on Wednesday night when a man attacked them with automatic weapons near
a barracks in Sarajevo
before blowing himself up, police said.
"Based on
elements that we have gathered since last night, it is almost certain that this
is a terrorist act," Deputy Defence Minister Emir Suljagic told national
radio.
He said the
perpetrators were "certainly linked with people of radical religious
convictions and that is certainly where we should look for the motivation for
this attack," he said.
Dozens of police
officers from special forces were dispatched to the scene after the attack in a
betting shop in a suburb of the Bosnian capital.
They then trapped
the killer, a 34-year-old man inside a house, where he blew himself up at
around midnight (2300 GMT).
Police spokesman
Irfan Nefic said two military personnel were killed in the attack, and a bus
driver and two passengers were also injured by broken glass when the assailant
shot at a bus as he left the scene.
A spokeswoman for Bosnia 's anti-terror
agency SIPA, Kristina Jozic, told AFP that "elements that have been
collected so far in this case indicate that there are some elements of
terrorism".
Leading Bosnian
newspapers on Thursday quoted witnesses claiming that the attacker shouted
"Allahu Akbar" (God is greatest) before opening fire.
"When the
police surrounded the house, an explosion rang out. They found the corpse of a
man who had killed himself inside the house," police official Vehid Cosic
told media after the attack.
Muslims make up
about 40 percent of Bosnia 's
3.8 million people while the rest of the Balkan country's population is mostly
Serbian Orthodox or Catholic.
The vast majority
of Bosnian Muslims are moderates but a tiny minority openly support radical
Wahhabism.
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