ZAGREB (AFP) — Croatia's top security body was to meet on Friday after a senior journalist was murdered in a car bomb attack as Prime Minister Ivo Sanader vowed he would not allow the country to turn into "another Beirut".
Ivo Pukanic, founder and owner of the Nacional independent weekly, was killed outside his paper's offices in downtown Zagreb on Thursday night in the third mafia-style killing in the capital since the beginning of the month.
The blast also claimed the life of his marketing director Niko Franjic, while two other people were also injured in the explosion.
"The blast occurred when Pukanic and Franjic approached the car," parked near Nacional's premises, police spokesman Krunoslav Borovec told reporters on Friday.
He said that the explosive device was placed near the car.
"It was done by a professional, there is no doubt about it since certain skills and knowledge are needed for such an act," he added.
Police already has some useful leads, Borovec added, without giving details.
Speaking late Thursday, Sanader said that his government would "fight even more decisively and more strongly against organised crime and terror which is entering Croatian streets."
"We will not allow Croatia to become another Beirut," he added in reference to the Lebanese capital which has been a byword for bloodshed and car bombings since the 1980s.
Earlier this month Sanader sacked his interior and justice ministers and the head of the national police after a daughter of a prominent lawyer was shot dead in the stairway.
Pukanic, 47, had been considered one of Croatia's most controversial journalists. His murder came only months after he survived a gun attack in downtown Zagreb in April. The attacker was not found.
The Croatian Journalists' Association said Pukanic was the first Croatian journalist to be killed locally since the country's 1991-1995 independence war.
The Nacional owner hit the headlines in 2003 when he published an interview with former Croatian general Ante Gotovina, two years after he fled following a war crimes indictment by The Hague-based UN tribunal.
During the past few years, independent media were accusing Pukanic of being close to some criminal circles.
Meanwhile, Croatian media voiced outrage over the killing which figured on the front pages of the country's main dailies.
"Terrorism" and "State of Emergency" read the headlines of the Jutarnji List and the Vecernji List which both carried large photos of the car's burnt-out wreckage.
In a column entitled "Victory of Organised Crime Over the State," the Jutarnji List labeled Pukanic's murder as "one of the most serious blows to Croatia's political system aimed also at destabilizing the whole state."
"It showed that the Croatian State is not capable of preventing violence ... including the attack against the publisher who was in personal conflict with a series of dangerous people."
"A quick, energetic and merciless repression is the only way to stop a killing wave which culminated yesterday evening in the Vlaska street," the paper concluded.
The largest circulation Vecernji List daily said that "criminals have sent the message: We rule in Croatia; life and death are in our hands."
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