13 People Shot Dead in Serbia Gun Rampage

Serbia has stricter gun laws than anything being proposed in Congress. No one can legally get guns in Serbia.

So how can this possibly happen?

The London Evening Standard writes:

A 60-year-old war veteran has shot dead 13 people in Serbia, including a baby, in a pre-dawn house-to-house rampage before trying to kill himself and his wife.

Ljubisa Bogdanovic, used a handgun in the attacks at five houses in Velika Ivanca, a village 30 miles from Belgrade. The dead included six women, several of them his relatives.

The killer and his wife survived, but with serious injuries.

Villagers described the suspect as having been a nice, quiet man. They said he first killed his son before leaving the house and then began shooting his neighbours, some of whom were still asleep.

“He knocked on the doors and as they were opened he just fired a shot,” said Radovan Radosavljevic. “He was a good neighbour and anyone would open their doors to him. I don’t know what happened.”

Another neighbour Milovan Kostadinovic said Bogdanovic was caught by a police patrol while on the way to his house.

The answer is simple, no one has a gun, and could do nothing about it.

 

Over 500 die in Europe’s persistent big freeze

The death toll from a nearly-two-week-long cold spell in Europe has exceeded 500 and caused the continent’s busiest waterway, the Danube, to freeze.

Ukraine has suffered the most casualties, with more than 140 people killed over the persistent cold.

Italy, France, Serbia, and the Czech Republic are among other countries that have sustained casualties.

Forecasters expect temperatures to plunge even further at the weekend.

Latest Snowstorm Blanketing Europe

Bitter Cold grips Europe -- Feb 6, 2012

The latest in a series of major winter storms will dump heavy snow in areas from the Balkan Peninsula and Italy to North Africa early in the week.

Some of these same areas have already received deep, even immobilizing, accumulations of snow following last week’s series of storms, which disrupted transportation infrastructure over a wide area.

Snow has contributed to the weather-related death toll, since late January, of at least 300 people, most of them dying of cold exposure.

About 70,000 people in Serbia were still cut off in snow-bound villages, according to many recent reports. Some mountain areas in Algeria also remained isolated.

More here, includes forecaster video.

Cold Kills

Belgrade – A cold wave sweeping across Europe has killed more than 420 people since late January, many of them homeless, and weather reports on Monday forecast more snow and frigid temperatures for the week.

Ice floes drift on the Oder river in Frankfurt (Oder), Germany, 06 February 2012. A cold spell has reached Europe with temperatures plummeting far below zero

The snow has thrown transportation out of gear, blocked arterial roads and cut off remote villages in many areas.

Four more people froze to death in Ukraine, which so far has the most victims in eastern Europe at 135. About 2,000 people were hospitalized for treatment from exposure to the -30 degrees Celsius temperatures.

In Poland, nine people have died since Sunday, bringing the death toll from late January to 61, the Interior Ministry said. Officials urged citizens to check heaters as some people have died of carbon monoxide poisoning.

Moscow’s municipal authorities said one man died from exposure overnight Monday, raising the death toll in the city to 63. Russian meteorologists said starting Wednesday, night temperatures were forecast to drop below -30 Celsius in Moscow, the Interfax news agency reported.

Serbia’s 10th victim froze to death in his unheated home in a village near Cuprija, 120 kilometres south-east of Belgrade, reported B92 online Monday, a day after the authorities declared a nationwide emergency situation because of the persistent snowfall and deep freeze.