Serbian president blames opposition after supporter shot and injured outside parliament

By Ivana Sekularac

BELGRADE (Reuters) -A man shot and injured a supporter of Serbian President Aleksandar Vucic on Wednesday outside the parliament building in Belgrade where anti-government protests have been held for almost a year - an incident that Vucic blamed on his opponents.

Vucic told a press conference the shooting was an act of terrorism, playing two police videos in which the suspect said he had taken a gasoline can into one of the tents set up in the area by Vucic supporters because the tents annoyed him.

"I did this so they (the police) would kill me. I did not know anyone in the tents. I am from Belgrade, and this (the tents) annoys me, I don't like occupation of the city center," Andjelkovic said in a video, shot while he was under arrest.

He said he was working on his own.

TENTS KEEP PROTESTERS AWAY FROM PARLIAMENT

Huge street protests have been going on for a year against Vucic, triggered by the collapse of a train station awning in the city of Novi Sad last November that killed 16 people and that many blame on government neglect and corruption.

The shooting took place in a park between the parliament and Vucic's office where his supporters have erected tents to block the protesters from approaching the buildings.

Vucic said 70-year-old Vladan Andjelkovic entered one of the tents carrying the metal can with gasoline and that Milan Bogdanovic, a government supporter, peered into the tent to see what was going on. Andjelkovic fired shots at him and he fell to the ground.

A video verified by Reuters showed a man hobbling away from the scene and the tent then catching fire. Health Minister Zlatibor Loncar told reporters that Bogdanovic had a serious wound and would have to be operated on urgently. Vucic said the incident showed the risks posed by the protests.

"There is no doubt that there was a political motivation behind all this," he said. "It is a miracle that in the past 11 months we did not have any casualties."

He said the opposition's campaign against the tents set up in front of the parliament had influenced Andjelkovic.

"Why did I say that this was a terrorist act - a firearm was used, the goal was to cause a general danger and a political motive where he says that the tents annoyed him," Vucic said.

Asked to comment on the incident, Savo Manojlovic of the opposition Move Change party told Reuters: "The creation of an artificial camp with tents and a landfill in the city center to provoke further confrontation, hatred and division is the responsibility of the institutions that allowed such misuse."

(Additional reporting by Antonis Pothitos and Daria Sito-Sucic; Writing by Edward McAllister; Editing by Philippa Fletcher)