Police officer stabbed to death in Bosnian town

SARAJEVO (Reuters) -A teenage boy stabbed a police officer to death and injured another in an attack in a northwestern Bosnian town on Thursday, which prosecutors described as an act of terrorism, officials said on Friday.

“At 20:40 (1840 GMT) an attack occurred in the police station in Bosanska Krupa in which a minor inflicted injuries to two police officers,” Amel Kozlica, director of the police force in the Una-Sana canton, told a news conference in the town of Bihac.

One officer died and another was taken in a hospital and is in a stable condition, Kozlica added.

The attacker, who is under 15 years of age, was arrested at the scene, chief cantonal prosecutor Merima Mešanović told the same news conference.

“The duty prosecutor characterised (the attack) as a criminal act of terrorism because this was … an attack on an institution with the aim of scaring the population,” Mesanovic said.

She said that the police searched the attacker’s home and took some items for further investigation.

The officials declined to provide more details.

“We cannot speculate in public before we conduct an investigation and talk to witnesses,” Kozlica said, adding that the security level in the town and the wider area has been raised, with armed police patrolling the streets.

Mesanovic said that penalty for such a criminal act is at least 10 years in jail to as much as life imprisonment but that the 14-year-old could only be sent to reformatory for a five-year period.

“We are investigating if someone had been encouraging the minor,” she said.

(Reporting by Ivana Sekularac and Daria Sito-Sucic; Editing by Michael Perry and Louise Heavens)