The Czech Republic has declared Saturday a national day of mourning after a gunman killed 14 people and injured 25 at a university in Prague.
President Petr Pavel expressed his “great sadness” and “helpless anger at the totally unnecessary” loss of life. The gunman, who police said had been “eliminated”, is believed to have also killed his father and may be linked to the deaths of two people last week.
It is one of the worst mass shootings in recent European history. The shooting began at around 15:00 local time (14:00 GMT) on Thursday at the Faculty of Arts building of Charles University in the centre of the Czech capital.
The gunman opened fire in the corridors and classrooms of the building, apparently killing at random, while staff and students used furniture to barricade themselves into rooms. Dramatic footage shared on social media shows people jumping to safety from an exterior ledge several storeys up. Gunshots can also be heard.
Police say the gunman was a 24-year-old student at the university and had no prior criminal record, though they add that a “huge arsenal of weapons and ammunition” was found. Before the shooting, police had received a report that the suspect was believed to be heading to Prague from a nearby town with the intention of killing himself.
A short time later, the man's father was discovered dead. Police evacuated a different university building where the gunman had been expected to attend a lecture, but a short time later were called to the faculty's main building nearby.
Of the 25 people wounded in the shooting, 10 were injured seriously, police said, adding that no officers had been hurt. In a statement, Czech Prime Minister Petr Fiala said: “We are all shocked by this horrendous act.
“It is hard to find the words to express condemnation on the one hand and, on the other, the pain and sorrow that our entire society is feeling in these days before Christmas.” He said Saturday would be a day of mourning, adding that flags would be flown at half-mast on all public buildings and that a minute's silence would be observed at midday.
Many sports and cultural events have been called off. On Thursday evening, people lit candles and left flowers near the scene of the shooting.
The motive for the shooting is as yet unclear.
Police said they had unconfirmed information from a social media account that the attack had been inspired by a similar incident in Russia, though did not provide further details.
They said the gunman was also suspected in the killing of a young man and his two-month-old daughter who were found dead in a forest on the outskirts of Prague on 15 December. The attack had one of the largest death tolls of any mass shooting by a lone gunman in Europe this century:
- Norway, July 2011 Anders Behring Breivik killed 77 people by planting a car bomb that killed eight at an Oslo government building and then shooting dead 69 more, most of them teenagers, at an island summer camp run by the ruling Labour Party's youth wing
- Germany, April 2002 Robert Steinhauser, 19, killed 16 people – 13 teachers, two pupils, and a policemen – at the Gutenberg Gymnasium secondary school in the city of Erfurt. He had been expelled from the school the previous autumn
- Germany, March 2009 Tim Kretschmer, 17, killed 15 people in a shooting that began at his former school in the town of Winnenden, near Stuttgart. He shot dead nine students and three teachers at the school before going on to the nearby town of Wendlingen, where he shot another three passers-by.
- Switzerland, September 2001 Friedrich Leibacher entered the regional parliament building in the city of Zug dressed in a police uniform and shot dead 14 people and injured another 10
- Serbia, April 2013 Ljubisa Bogdanovic shot dead thirteen people, including a two-year-old boy, and injured his wife in a village outside Belgrade. Bogdanovic was a military veteran who had fought with Serb forces in the Croatian War of Independence in the early 1990s.
Founded in 1347, Charles University is the oldest and largest university in the Czech Republic and one of the oldest such institutions in Europe.
— CutC by bbc.com
