International Desk : Eight pupils and a security guard have been killed after a 14-year-old boy opened fire in his Belgrade classroom on Wednesday, Serbia's interior ministry said.

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Milan Milosevic, the father of one of the pupils at the Vladislav Ribnikar elementary school in the Serbian capital, said his daughter was in the class where the gun was fired.

"She managed to escape. (The boy) ...first shot the teacher and then he started shooting randomly," Milosevic told broadcaster N1.

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The interior ministry said eight children and a security guard had been killed and six children had been hospitalised along with the teacher.

Police said a seventh-grade student had been arrested in the schoolyard.

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Casualties are being treated and an investigation into the motives behind shooting is under way, a police statement said.

Mass shootings are comparatively rare in Serbia, which has very strict gun laws and has issued several amnesties for owners to hand in or register illegal guns.

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But the western Balkans are awash with hundreds of thousands of illegal weapons following wars and unrest in the 1990s.

Sun News/MR

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