No explosive device has been found at Zagreb's Arena shopping centre, the police told the Croatian state news agency Hina on Friday, adding that they are continuing to establish all the circumstances related to this event.

In the afternoon, the police evacuated the shopping centre following an anonymous tip that an explosive device had been planted there.

Mayor Tomislav Tomasevic visited the scene, saying that if it was a hoax, he expected the police to find and most severely punish “the idiot playing with the nerves of the people of Zagreb after  (two) earthquakes, the pandemic and the crash of a military plane.”

The head of Arena’s marketing department, Sanja Vladovic, said they received an anonymous email saying that two bombs had been planted in the shopping centre.

She estimated that, since it was Friday afternoon, there were about 2,000 people in the centre when the email arrived.