MOSCOW – At least seven people were killed today, most of them children, in a shooting at a high school in the central Russian city of Kazan, said officials and news reports.
Officials said at least one gunman was involved and detained, though there are unconfirmed reports of two attackers, including one who was killed.
A police spokesman said officers were dispatched to School No. 175 in Kazan, the capital of the Russian republic of Tatarstan, after reports of shots being fired.
Amateur footage on social media, apparently filmed from a nearby building, showed people escaping from the school by jumping from second- and third-floor windows, with sounds of gunshots echoing in the schoolyard.
The National Anti-Terrorism Committee said seven children were killed and 16 people wounded.
The mayor of Kazan said eight people were killed, while Russian news agencies, citing official sources, said 11 died.
There were initial reports of two shooters, with one said to have been barricaded on the fourth floor of the building and killed, but officials later said a lone attacker was responsible.
The Investigative Committee, which probes into major crimes in Russia, said a local born in 2001 was detained in connection with the attack.
President Vladimir Putin called for a review of gun control laws after the shooting, while authorities declared tomorrow a day of mourning.
‘Major tragedy’
Tatarstan’s regional leader, Rustam Minnikhanov, arrived at the scene and entered the school after it was declared secure by law enforcement.
“We are deeply saddened that this has happened,” he said in televised remarks.
“It’s a major tragedy for our republic.”
He said earlier that four boys and three girls were among those killed.
“Sixteen more people are in hospital,” he said, 12 of whom are children.
He described the detained assailant as a “terrorist”, and said the 19-year-old alleged shooter has a licence to carry a firearm.
Images broadcast on state television showed dozens of people outside the school, with fire services and police vehicles lining nearby streets.
Putin expressed his “deep condolences” to the victims and ordered a review of gun control legislation, said the Kremlin.
“The president gave an order to urgently work out a new provision concerning the types of weapons that can be in civilian hands, taking into account the weapon” used in the attack, his spokesman, Dmitry Peskov, told reporters.
Tight school security
Russia has relatively few school shootings due to normally tight security at education facilities and the difficulty in buying firearms legally, although it is possible to register hunting rifles.
In November 2019, a 19-year-old student in the far-eastern town of Blagoveshchensk opened fire at his college, killing one classmate and injuring three other people before shooting himself dead.
In October 2018, a teenage shooter killed 20 people at the Kerch technical college in Crimea, the peninsula that Russia annexed from Ukraine in 2014.
The 18-year-old attacker, who also set off explosives in one of the school’s buildings, shot himself dead at the site.
He was shown in camera footage wearing a similar T-shirt to Eric Harris, one of the killers in the 1999 Columbine High School shooting in the United States that left 13 people dead.
Putin at the time blamed the attack on “globalisation” and online communities dedicated to US school shootings that promoted “fake heroes”.
The Crimea shooter, Vladislav Roslyakov, was able to legally obtain a gun licence after undergoing marksmanship training and being examined by a psychiatrist.
The incident led to calls for tighter gun control in Russia.
The country’s FSB security service said it has prevented dozens of armed attacks on schools in recent years.
In February last year, the agency said it had detained two teenagers on suspicion of plotting an attack on a school in the city of Saratov with weapons and home-made explosives. – AFP, May 11, 2021
