International Desk: A 14-year-old boy shot dead eight fellow pupils and a security guard and wounded his teacher and six other students when he opened fire in his Belgrade classroom on Wednesday morning, Serbia’s interior ministry said.

Milan Milosevic, the father of one of the pupils at the Vladislav Ribnikar elementary school in the Serbian capital, said his daughter was in the class where the gun was fired.

“She managed to escape. (The boy) …first shot the teacher and then he started shooting randomly,” Milosevic told broadcaster N1.

Milan Nedeljkovic, mayor of the central Vracar district where the school is located, said doctors were fighting to save the teacher’s life.

The interior ministry statement said eight children and a security guard had been killed and six children had been hospitalised along with the teacher.

Police said a seventh-grade student had been arrested in the schoolyard.

“I saw the security guard lying under the table. I saw two girls with blood on their shirts. They say he (the shooter) was quiet and a good pupil. He recently joined their class,” added Milosevic, who had rushed to the school after the shooting.

Officers in helmets and bulletproof vests cordoned off the area around the school.

“I saw kids running out from the school, screaming. Parents came, they were in panic. Later I heard three shots,” a girl who attends a high school adjacent to Vladislav Ribnikar told state TV RTS.

Casualties are being treated and an investigation into the motives behind shooting is under way, a police statement said.