Gunman kills Bosnian policeman in apparent Islamist attack

A gunman shouting “Allahu Akbar” (God is greatest) attacked a police station in eastern Bosnia on Monday, killing one police officer and wounding two before he was shot dead, a police spokeswoman said.
“The attacker broke into the station and started a shooting spree,” Aleksandra Simojlovic told Reuters.
The attack occurred at around 7 p.m. (1700 GMT) in Zvornik, a town in Bosnia’s Serb-dominated autonomous region, the Serb Republic, which together with the Bosniak-Croat Federation makes up the Bosnia that emerged from the 1992-95 war.
“This is the worst terrorism attack that could happen in the Serb Republic,” regional Interior Minister Dragan Lukac told local television, adding that security level had been raised after the attack.
Doctors said the two police officers’ wounds were not life-threatening.
This was the first attack of its kind in the Serb Republic, though similar ones have occurred in the Federation, including a 2010 bomb attack on a police station in central Bosnia and an attack on the U.S. embassy in the capital Sarajevo a year later.
Most Bosnian Muslims practice a moderate form of Islam but some have embraced the puritanical ideology of the Sunni Wahhabi sect and the government estimates that up to 200 have gone to Syria and Iraq to fight for the Islamic State group.
Thousands of Bosnian Muslims were expelled from Zvornik by Serb forces during the war but some have since returned.