Bosnia Mourns Victim of Attack in Zvornik

Bosnia's two entities, the Serb-dominated Republika Srpska and the mainly Bosniak and Croat Federation entity, marked the day of mourning on Wednesday for the victim of Monday's terrorist attack in the eastern town of Zvornik.

A policeman, Dragan Djuric, was killed by a gunman and two other policemen were wounded.

Amid ethnic tensions raised by the slaying, the authorities and security agencies are urgently investigating details and the background to the incident.

Bosnia's State Investigation and Protection Agency, SIPA, in cooperation with local police forces over the past 24 hours raided houses and detained two persons believed to be connected to the incident.

On Monday, 24-year-old Bosniak [Muslim], Nerdin Ibric, from the village of Kucic Kula near Zvornik drove his car in front of the police station armed with two rifles and a pistol. He shot one policeman at the entrance and wounded two more inside the building before he was shot dead in an exchange of fire with other policemen.

Police said he shouted the Islamist slogan "Allahu Akbar" ["God is Greatest"] during the shootings. Testimonies from Ibric's own family suggest he felt motivated by radical Islamists, leading officials to declare the attack religiously motivated.

Some media reported that the two persons detained in relation to this case in the past traveled to battlefields in Syria to fight along Islamic militant groups.

The attack has raised ethnic tensions across the country, but especially in Zvornik, which was the scene of some of the worst atrocities of the 1992-5 war after Bosnian Serbs cleansed the town of its pre-war Muslim majority population.

Some Bosniaks have since returned to the town where they now live alongside Serbs...