A toddler who disappeared in eastern Serbia last week was killed and two suspects have been arrested.
President Aleksandar Vucic disclosed this on Thursday, following a frantic search for the missing two-year-old.
Danka Ilic went missing on March 26 in the eastern city of Bor, prompting Serbian authorities to use for the first time its version of an Amber alert system for child abduction emergencies, to send text messages nationwide about the incident.
“The police have arrested two individuals who have killed the little girl. As far as I understand, both of them have confessed to the crime,” Vucic told government officials.
“What kind of monsters are we dealing with?” he added.
Hopes were briefly stirred over the weekend after a video surfaced of a young child at a bus station in Vienna that sparked speculation that Ilic might be in Austria, where a large Serbian diaspora community lives.
On Sunday, Interpol also flagged the case, issuing a Yellow Notice that alerts officials about a missing person.
The missing child’s mother, Ivana Ilic, told Serbian media this week that the family continued to “hold on” amid the search.
“We are waiting for all this to end, hoping for the best, and then my husband and I will speak publicly and respond to all the insults, accusations and nonsense,” she told the local Serbian news outlet Nova.
Abductions of children remain relatively rare in Serbia, despite social media users pumping out conspiracy theories about the selling and trafficking of adolescents in the Balkan nation.
AFP
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