Police say gunman kills six in Bosnia village

A man shot and killed six people in a village near the northern Bosnian town of Tuzla on Thursday, gunning down three in their homes and three aboard a bus, police and witnesses at the scene said.

Local media identified the man as a 45-year old from the village, and said some of his victims were his neighbours. Villagers said he had behaved strangely for some time and was suffering from depression.

"The man has been arrested and an investigation is under way," Tuzla police spokesman Izudin Saric said by telephone, adding the victims were three men and three women. "His motives are not clear."

A bus driver wounded in the early-morning incident in the village of Gornja Lipnica was in intensive care in hospital. The shooting is believed to be the worst in the area since the end of the brutal 1992-95 war.

The Tuzla region is part of Bosnia's Muslim-Croat federation, one of the country's two autonomous halves along with the Serb Republic.

The area now hosts many thousand Bosnian Muslim refugees from other parts of the country who were displaced in the war.