Sarajevo - Pope Francis's visit Saturday to Bosnia, where he is expected to be greeted by 100,000 people, is posing a significant security challenge in the Balkan country that has become a fertile ground for homegrown jihadists, experts said.
The pope's one-day stopover in Sarajevo comes a month after an attack on a police station in northeastern Bosnia in which a suspected member of a local Islamist movement shot an officer dead and wounded two others before he was killed in the shootout.
"We must finally face the fact that there is a serious problem of terrorism which is growing in Bosnia," Security Minister Dragan Mektic said after the deadly attack in Zvornik.
Bosnia has grappled with a radical Islamist legacy left behind after its 1990s war that drew Islamist fighters from around the globe.
A previous attack, labelled terrorist in nature by the government, came in 2011 when an Islamist gunman opened fire at the US embassy in Sarajevo.
He wounded a policeman before being injured himself and was arrested.
But the incidents have not put into doubt the pontiff's visit, which was announced in February.
"There is no particular concern for the safety" of the pope, Vatican spokesman Federico Lombardi said.
During Pope John Paul II's visit to Bosnia in 1997, two years after the Balkan wars ended, police discovered explosives under a Sarajevo bridge that the pontiff was to cross just hours later. Those responsible were never found.
AFP
