Serbian police have shot and killed a man who was linked to the attacker who fired a crossbow at the Israeli embassy in Belgrade in June.
Interior Minister Ivica Dacic said the man fired at police near the southern city of Novi Pazar late and refused to surrender.
"During the arrest, he resisted, fired three or four shots at the police and members of the Special Anti-Terrorist Squad neutralized him," Dacic told Serbian media.
He added that the man had already been convicted and imprisoned for terrorist offences.
The police operation was conducted in the village of Hotkovo, near Novi Pazar - the historical and political center of the Bosniak Muslim minority in Serbia.
Police said the man was wanted in connection with another person killed by police in Belgrade on June 29 after he shot a police officer in the neck with a crossbow outside the Israeli embassy.
The attack in the Serbian capital was branded a "terrorist act" by officials, who described the attacker as a Serb convert to Islam.
Police said the man killed Saturday night was the attacker's landlord since June, who lived in his apartment in Novi Pazar before the embassy attack.
He has been on the run since the attack in June, Ivica Dacic said.
Local media described the man killed in Novi Pazar as a "well-known follower" of the Wahhabi movement, a form of Islam that dominates Saudi Arabia.
The Ministry of the Interior confirmed that he was arrested in 2007 and sentenced to 13.5 years in prison as part of a group involved in an armed conflict with police officers in the village of Tarnava, near Novi Pazar.
At that time, 14 of his associates were also arrested, subsequently accused of planning terrorist attacks in Belgrade and Novi Pazar. | BGNES
