Slovak police say suspicious item found near site of shooting rampage is harmless

Package found near killings in Slovakia harmless

BRATISLAVA, Slovakia — A suspicious package found near the site in Slovakia’s capital where a heavily armed man killed seven people and committed suicide did not contain any explosives and turned out to be harmless, police said Tuesday.

Monday’s shooting rampage, which also wounded 15 people, has shaken Slovakia. In a sign of its impact, the Slovak news agency TASR reported that a special government session dedicated to the attack was set for later Tuesday.

On Tuesday morning, police received a phone call about the suspicious package on a street in the dilapidated Devinska Nova Ves neighborhood of Bratislava, the Slovak capital, police spokeswoman Petra Hraskova said.

Specialists called to the scene determined that the package — a box under a car — did not contain a bomb, Hraskova said. That was a relief to residents in the area, who remained badly shaken by the killings.

Police are still trying to determine what motivated the crime.

The attacker, described as a 48-year-old local resident, used a machine gun and two pistols to target his victims.

At least five of those killed were members of a Roma, or Gypsy, family, but officials said they did not know if that motivated the crime. The Roma often face widespread discrimination in Europe.

Eight of the people wounded remained hospitalized Tuesday, with two, including a 33-year-old Czech man, in very serious condition, said Rut Gerzova, a spokeswoman for Bratislava’s University Hospital. A policeman who was badly hurt has improved and started talking with doctors, she added.

Officials have disclosed few details about the gunman, but said he legally possessed the weapons he used.

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Associated Press writers Nadia Rybarova in Prague and Veronika Oleksyn in Vienna contributed to this report.