Bosnia's most wanted, serial killer Edin Gacic, dies in shootout with police

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Police shot dead a serial killer on Tuesday after an eight days-long manhunt that saw more than a thousand officers comb the area south of Sarajevo where the man is suspected of having killed his last victim - a police officer on duty.

Edin Gacic, 42, was Bosnia's most wanted person since February 4, when the body of a grocery store owner in the village of Podorasac, south of Sarajevo, was found.

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While police were looking for Gacic, whom they suspected of committing the crime, he allegedly killed a police officer who was guarding a police training facility in Suhodol, near the Sarajevo suburb of Tarcin on Saturday.

This prompted authorities to mobilize more than 1,000 officers who eventually found Gacic in Koscan, some 30 kilometres south of Sarajevo.

The confrontation resulted in a shootout, which ended with Gacic's death.

Gacic was convicted of murder in 1999 and was sentenced to 14 years behind bars.

But in 2002, during a leave from prison, he killed his own mother.

He was subsequently convicted to a 20-year sentence.

Prior to the expiration of his sentence, Gacic was transferred to a Bihac prison, in northern Bosnia.

The prison administration then wrote to several competent institutions, saying that Gacic was a high-risk convict likely to commit the same crime after he is released.

Experts recommended Gacic to be put into a mental facility but authorities failed to follow the recommendation.