A fugitive Croatian retired general committed suicide on Thursday after reportedly killing a policeman and four others, police said Thursday.
Marijan Benko, the head of the Croatian police, confirmed that Ivan Korade was found dead during an operation to catch him, said reports reaching here from the Croatian capital Zagreb.
The 44 year-old Korade, suspected of murdering four people last week, engaged in a shoot-out with police and killed a policeman after being located near his holiday home in Velika Veternicka, a village some 50 kilometers north of Zagreb.
The search for the retired general began last week, after one of the gravest killing sprees in Croatia since the 1990s' war.
Korade was suspected of killing a former bodyguard, a neighbor and her teenage grandson and another villager. They were all shot in the eye and head, while the villager was additionally stabbed in the throat, said press reports.
According to the police and the prosecutor's office, Korade committed the murders either out of revenge or to cover up a crime.
Some five hundred policemen, including special units, searched eight days for Korade, aided by police dogs and helicopters, in one of the biggest police searches ever undertaken in Croatia.
Earlier this week, Croatian police issued an international arrest warrant for Korade, who had been suspected of hiding in neighboring Bosnia or Slovenia.
However, on Thursday it was reported that Korade had spent days hidden in a tunnel which he had dug near his home.
The bloody end of the intensive search came a day before U.S. President George Bush's visit to Zagreb on Friday.
Some media earlier reported that Bush's security service were concerned about the ongoing search and had asked for a Croatian police assessment of any impact which the search might have on the president's security.
Korade, who lost an arm during the war in Croatia in the 1990s and is regarded by some as a hero, was believed to have suffered from post-traumatic stress disorder.
After retirement in 1997, he was involved in several violent incidents, including shootings. In one armed clash, he witnessed his bodyguard killing a man. The bodyguard was sentenced to six years in jail in 2001.
Source: Xinhua
|
Comment
Tell A Friend
Print Format
Save Article