An attacker armed with two knives struck a police officer guarding Israel’s embassy in Belgrade shortly after midnight on Wednesday, lightly wounding him before the officer shot him dead, Serbia’s interior minister said. The wounded officer, a member of the country’s elite Gendarmerie unit, was hurt in the face. Belgrade is treating the assault as a terrorist attack and has raised the national threat level to its maximum.
- Key Point: A knife-carrying assailant attacked a Gendarmerie officer at the Israeli embassy compound in the early hours of Wednesday.
- Key Point: The officer, wounded in the face, killed the attacker in self-defense, Interior Minister Ivica Dacic said.
- Key Point: Serbia moved its terror threat to the highest “red alert” level and tightened checks at sensitive sites and crowded places.
- Key Point: Dacic said the attacker was a minor from the western town of Sabac whom security agencies had monitored as an Islamic State supporter.
A guard post, two knives and a burst of gunfire
According to the interior ministry’s account, the man approached the guard booth outside the embassy in the early hours of Wednesday and went at the officer with two knives, shouting “Allahu Akbar” as he did so. Dacic described the assailant as a minor whose identity had not yet been established.
“A minor whose identity has yet to be established … attacked a member of the police with two knives while shouting ‘Allahu Akbar.'”
The minister said the officer fired in self-defense and killed his attacker while escaping with light injuries. Police photographs released after the incident showed the booth, a wide cordon and officers in full tactical gear holding the street.
No embassy staff were caught up in the violence. Israel’s foreign ministry confirmed that an attempted attack had taken place beside the mission and said its personnel were unharmed, noting that the building was shut at the time.
“The attacker was neutralized by local police. No embassy personnel were injured, and the mission was closed at the time of the incident.”
The ministry said the circumstances were still being examined.
Red alert, and a suspect already on the radar
Dacic said the assailant had not been unknown to the authorities before the stabbing: Serbian security agencies had been monitoring him as a follower of Islamic State, and he was believed to have come from Sabac, a town in western Serbia.
“He kept the black flag in support of the Islamic State on his Instagram.”
With the case classified as terrorism, the ministry lifted the country’s threat assessment to its top tier, which Serbian officials call a “red alert.”
“This means tighter security checks and an increased police presence at sensitive sites, including infrastructure facilities and places where large crowds gather.”
The embassy sits in an upscale quarter of the Serbian capital, a short distance from the US mission, and is normally watched over by heavily armed Gendarmerie officers. Serbia has maintained close relations with Israel.
An attack wedged between two national votes
The timing places the assault in an unusually unsettled political stretch for both countries. Serbia voted on Sunday in an early parliamentary election that ended with the long-dominant former president, Aleksandar Vucic, losing to a youth-led movement after almost two years of anti-government demonstrations. Vucic and his allies nevertheless still command the police, because a new cabinet has not yet been formed.
Israel held its own parliamentary election on Tuesday, the day before the Belgrade attack, and preliminary results pointed to no decisive winner.
The compound has been targeted before. In June 2024, a man armed with a crossbow seriously wounded a Serbian officer posted at the same embassy gate before police shot him dead. That assailant was identified at the time as a 25-year-old convert to Islam from a village near Belgrade who had been radicalized.
The immediate consequence is a more visible security posture: armed patrols around embassies, transport hubs and crowded public spaces while investigators work. Serbia’s police force is still directed by the outgoing administration, with a new government yet to take office, and the alert is likely to be relaxed only once officials are satisfied they understand who the attacker was, whom he had been in contact with and how he reached the embassy gate carrying two knives.