Explosion in Rakovica: Belgrade's Second Bomb in Two Nights

An explosive device went off in Stojana Jankovica Street, in the Belgrade municipality of Rakovica, in the early hours of Friday, August 7, around 3 a.m. Nobody was hurt in the Rakovica explosion, since no pedestrians were on the street at that hour. The blast left material damage behind: a hole in the asphalt, broken windows on nearby buildings and a parked car.

The detonation was heard across a wide stretch of that part of the city. Residents of surrounding buildings woke up to the impact, and the spot where the device was thrown was left with a crater in the asphalt. The shock wave shattered windows on buildings close to the site.

What investigators know so far

Several police teams arrived at the scene as soon as the incident was reported. Part of the street was cordoned off while the on site investigation was underway. Officers are gathering information and reviewing footage from security cameras in the area to identify and locate whoever is responsible.

The search is ongoing. So far there is no word of an arrest, and it remains unknown who threw the device or who it was meant for. No estimate of the damage to the car or to the apartments has been released either.

The Night Before, in Zvezdara

This is not the only explosive device to go off in Belgrade this week. The night before Rakovica, on Thursday, August 6, also around 3 a.m., an unknown person threw an explosive device at a residential building in Gajeva Street in Zvezdara.

There, the device bounced off a terrace and landed on the pavement between parked cars, detonating in the open. The consequences were more extensive than in Rakovica:

• three cars were damaged
• the storefronts of two businesses in the building were shattered
• the facade of the neighboring building was damaged
• the building’s entrance door was damaged as well

A resident of the Zvezdara building, 24 years old, said he believes the device was meant for him. He also said his car had been set on fire a month earlier. His claim has not been officially confirmed and is, for now, only one of the versions investigators are checking.

Why do two nights in a row matter for the investigation?

Because the two attacks line up on the factors that get compared first in cases like this: time, target and method. Both happened around 3 a.m., at an hour when almost nobody is out on the street. Both targeted residential buildings in populated neighborhoods, not isolated locations. In both cases an explosive device was thrown, with no gunfire and no direct physical attack on anyone.

That does not mean the cases are connected. It means they have to be checked against each other, since failing to do so would be an oversight. Zvezdara gives investigators a head start, since there is a resident who sees himself as a target and an earlier incident involving a torched car. No such lead is known yet for Rakovica, so the work there rests on camera footage and the circumstances of the neighborhood.

What remains unknown

With no one arrested and no official classification of the crime, three questions remain open and will shape what happens next:

• who the device in Rakovica was meant for, if a target existed at all
• whether the same person or the same group is behind both Rakovica and Zvezdara
• what type of device was used, which forensic analysis will determine

The answer to the third question typically comes first, since the remains of the device are collected at the scene and sent for forensic testing. The type and construction of a device often link seemingly separate cases faster than witnesses do.

Until then, Stojana Jankovica Street is left with a crater in the asphalt, and residents who, for the second night in a row, in two different parts of the city, were woken by the same sound.