BELGRADE, March 12: Serbian Prime Minister Zoran Djindjic, who played a key role in ousting Yugoslav President Slobodan Milosevic, was assassinated on Wednesday, gunned down outside Belgrade’s main government building.

Serbia’s government held an urgent meeting and declared a state of emergency.

Mr Djindjic, 50, who took the decision to send Mr Milosevic to the U.N. war crimes tribunal in The Hague in 2001, narrowly escaped injury last month when a truck swerved towards his convoy of cars. He said then that organized crime was behind the incident.

“The prime minister died from his wounds at 1330 (5.30pm PST) at a Belgrade emergency centre,” Serbia’s Deputy Prime Minister Nebojsa Covic said in a statement.

A police source said Djindjic died after he was shot in the chest by two large calibre sniper bullets fired from a distance. Local B92 radio said he was shot in the back and the stomach. The radio said two people had been arrested in connection with the shooting and Beta news agency reported three people detained.

All departing flights from Belgrade airport were suspended and armed police wearing flak jackets searched cars in central Belgrade.

Djindjic is the most senior politician to be killed in a series of murders of public figures in former Yugoslavia in the past three years in a region where revenge killings and vendettas are often rife.—Reuters