Four die in Serbia gun rampage

A Serbian intelligence officer has killed four colleagues and injured three in a gun rampage, say police.

The man opened fire at random with an automatic weapon inside the Serbian Security Agency in Nis in south-eastern Serbia.

The incident happened at around 0800 local time (0600 GMT).

The dead officers include a woman, police told AFP news agency. Two of the three injured were said to be in a serious condition.

Kosovo connection

A police statement named the suspected gunman as Vladan Rovcanin. He was detained after the attack.

There was no immediate word on the reason for the attack.

The building where the attack took place housed officers from the province of Kosovo, which is now under international administration.

The suspected gunman himself worked in Kosovo until Serb forces withdrew in 1999. He is thought to have been a senior intelligence officer in Pristina.

'Mental illness'

A police source said the killer appeared "psychologically deranged" as he carried out the attack.

The BBC's Matthew Price in Belgrade says such incidents are uncommon in Serbia, but in a country which has witnessed so much turmoil in the last decade, psychologists say they are seeing more and more cases of mental illness.

The health service, he says, is ill equipped to deal with the problem.