Sandžak

The visit to Serbia of Turkish President Recep Tayyip Erdogan has been accompanied by even tighter security measures than those surrounding the visits of Russian President Vladimir Putin or former US Vice President Joe Biden, according to the Serbian media.

A suspect has been arrested in the southwestern Serbian town of Novi Pazar after the shooting and wounding late on Thursday of a police officer.

The suspect has been named by the police with his initial and year of birth as DZ.K. (1983), a resident of Novi Pazar. He is currently held in up to 48 hours police custody.

The Bosniak National Council in Serbia was criticised on Tuesday for announcing it will mark the centenary of the adoption of the Sjenica Declaration, a 1917 document that called for the secession of the mostly Muslim-populated Sandzak region from Serbia and Montenegro.

The Bosniak National Council (BNV), headed by Sulejman Ugljanin, will mark the 100th anniversary of the controversial Sjenica Declaration, writes Blic.

The daily recalls that with this declaration, leaders from the Sandzak area "wanted to secede parts of the territories of Serbia and Montenegro."

Over 4,000 people have signed a petition calling for the mostly Bosniak Muslim region of Sandzak, straddling Serbia and Montenegro, to be declared a cross-border region of the type that exists in the European Union.

A deminer has been injured when a cluster bomb exploded during a mine clearing operation at the military airport Dubinje near Sjenica, in southwestern Serbia.

Beta is reporting this on Thursday quoting the local radio station Sto Plus.

Around 30 villages in the Sjenica area remained blocked by the snow, municipal president Hazbo Mujovic said on Monday afternoon.

Many roads are also closed, he added.

Montenegrin journalists' associations have protested over the decision of the police to scrap round-the-clock security for crime reporter Tufik Softic.

Softic has lived under 24-hour police protection for almost two years following threats he received for coverage of organized crime groups in Montenegro.

The rain that fell over the previous 24 hours on Tuesday caused flooding in western and southern areas of Serbia.

A state of emergency has been declared in one part of the Sjenica municipality after the Vapa River flooded a dozen households.

A Technical High School student in Novi Pazar, southwestern Serbia, has been stabbed tree times in the neck and back with a knife during class.

The identity of the victim, who was taken to the hospital in a stable condition, remains unknown.