Bosnia Arrests Suspect after 'Islamist' Attack on Police

Bosnian police arrested two people on Tuesday after a suspected Islamist gunman attacked a police station, killing one officer and wounding two others.

Shouting "Allahu Akbar" (God is greatest), the attacker opened fire Monday evening on the station in the eastern town of Zvornik before being killed in a shootout with police.

Bosnian police were on high alert for further attacks, with elite units deployed to Zvornik, as media reports spoke of a possible link to arrests in Australia over an Anzac Day plot.

Officials said the assailant, identified as 24-year-old Nerdin Ibric, was believed to have links to the hardline Islamist Wahhabi movement. 

Intelligence services last week received information about a planned attack, but no details of when and where it would take place, Security Minister Dragan Mektic told reporters.

"We now need to confirm if there is a link between that information and this event," he said.

The first suspect arrested Tuesday, identified only as A.F.H., came from the same village as the attacker, near Zvornik in Republika Srpska, the Serb-run part of Bosnia, local Interior Minister Dragan Lukac said.

"This is a person who had been previously interrogated in connection with departures to fight in Syria and also with the Wahhabi movement," Lukac was quoted by local radio as saying.

The second suspect was identified as K.M. from the northeastern town of Kalesija, police said, but gave no further details.

Private television TV1 said the first suspect had been in Syria last year and was briefly arrested in September as part of a probe into extremist groups. He had close ties to Ibric, it said. 

Some 150 Bosnians are believed to have joined jihadist groups fighting in Iraq and Syria, with 50 others believed to have already returned to Bosnia from Middle East battlefields, according to the intelligence services.

- Possible revenge attacks -

State-run FTV television, quoting intelligence sources, said the information about a possible plot had been received after the arrest of men of Bosnian origin accused of planning attacks in Australia.

It said the intelligence agency had warned that "terrorist attacks in Bosnia were possible in revenge."

Two men were arrested in Melbourne on terrorism charges on April 18 for allegedly planning an Islamic State-inspired attack against police at Anzac Day commemorations honoring soldiers who fought and died for Australia.

Monday's attack is believed to be the first of its kind in Bosnian Serb territory but there have been similar incidents in other parts of the country.

Republika Srpska president Milorad Dodik said it was "clear" the attacker had "religious and terrorist" motives.

"I fear this could be the beginning of much worse events in the whole of Bosnia," Lukac warned.

Relations between Bosnia's Serbs -- who are mostly Orthodox Christian -- and Muslims have remained tense since the end of the 1992-1995 war among the country's Serb, Muslim and Croat communities.

Local media reported that Ibric's father was among 750 Muslims taken away and killed by Bosnian Serb forces in Zvornik in 1992.

Since the war, Bosnia has been split into two semi-independent entities -- Republika Srpska and the Muslim-Croat Federation, each with its own government.

- 'Terrorism spreading' -

Mektic said terrorism had become "a serious problem" in Bosnia.

"We need to use all our capacity to stop this terrorism that has been spreading in Bosnia," he said. "Either we defeat terrorism or it will defeat us."

Muslims make up 40 percent of Bosnia's 3.8 million inhabitants. The vast majority practice a moderate form of Islam but Islamist extremists have made their presence felt before.

In October 2011, an Islamist radical opened fire on the U.S. embassy in Sarajevo, wounding a policeman before being injured himself and arrested.

In June the previous year, an extremist set off an explosive device at a police station in the central town of Bugojno, killing one officer and wounding six others.