Serbian mass shooting gunman jailed for 20 years

Belgrade: A 21 year old man was on Thursday sentenced to 20 years in prison after being found guilty at a Serbian court of killing nine people in a ma...

Belgrade: A 21-year-old man was on Thursday sentenced to 20 years in prison after being found guilty at a Serbian court of killing nine people in a mass shooting spree.

Uros Blazic gunned down his victims, the youngest of whom was aged 14, in the villages of Dubona and Malo Orasje, about 50 kilometres (32 miles) from Belgrade on May 4 last year.

Twelve others were wounded in the shooting, which came just a day after a 13-year-old student killed nine of his classmates and a security guard at his school in the centre of the capital.

The back-to-back shooting shocked Serbians and saw President Aleksandar Vucic vow to launch a large-scale disarmament plan to remove hundreds of thousands of guns from the country.

Blazic was given the maximum 20-year sentence in a fast-tracked trial as he was aged under 21 at the time of the offences, angering families of the victims.