TIRANA, Albania (AP) – A shootout in an Albanian village known as a major illegal marijuana production area has left a 31-year-old police officer dead and two others wounded, police said Wednesday.
Gunfire was heard coming from the village during the day, according to local media. More police were heading to the area, authorities said.
Police spokesman Ardi Bita said the shots were fired by a suspected criminal gang from a house in the village of Lazarat, 200 kilometers (125 miles) south of the capital, Tirana. The village was the target of a major police raid last year to crack down on marijuana production.
The village came to prominence in 2014 after a five-day police siege in which special police forces came under intense fire from automatic weapons and rocket launchers from local homes. The raid destroyed 102 tons of marijuana and 530,000 marijuana plants with an estimated market value at the time of 6.4 billion euros ($8.2 billion) – more than 60 percent of the country’s annual gross domestic product.
Wednesday’s shootout came after police stationed in the village stopped a car transporting weapons, seizing two rifles and one automatic rifle and arresting the driver. Police had launched an operation in the morning to arrest suspects who had shot at but did not injure policemen stationed in the village overnight.
Prime Minister Edi Rama, along with his interior and health ministers, visited the injured police officers in a hospital in Tirana, where they had been airlifted by helicopter. Both were listed in non-life threatening condition.
“We are in mourning … and I believe every Albanian who values the honesty, courage and service of the state police is in mourning too,” Rama told journalists.