At least 9 individuals have been killed after capturing broke out Tuesday at a highschool in the central Russian metropolis of Kazan, native information companies reported.
Citing native sources, companies reported that two individuals had opened hearth at School No. 175 in Kazan, the capital of Russia’s republic of Tatarstan.
Interfax reported that one of many attackers, a 17-year-old, had been detained however {that a} second assailant was nonetheless inside the varsity constructing.
It mentioned eight college students and one trainer had been killed and that police had sealed off the fourth ground of the varsity and have been trying to detain the second attacker.
News company TASS additionally reported 9 useless and mentioned 10 individuals had been injured, together with a number of kids.
Tatarstan President Rustam Minnikhanov had arrived on the scene, companies reported.
Images broadcast on state tv from the scene confirmed dozens of individuals outdoors the varsity with hearth providers and police automobiles lining close by streets.
“I used to be in class, I first heard an explosion, then gunshots,” TASS quoted a teacher as saying.
Another source cited by the RIA Novosti agency said they had heard an explosion and could see smoke rising from the building.
Tight school security
Russia has relatively few school shootings due to normally tight security in education facilities and the difficulty of 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 in his college, killing one classmate and injuring three other people before shooting himself dead.
In October 2018, a teenage gunman killed 20 people at the Kerch technical college in Crimea, the peninsula 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 US, which left 13 people dead.
Russian President Vladimir Putin at the time blamed the attack on “globalisation” and on-line communities devoted to American faculty shootings which promoted “pretend 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 shooting led to calls for tighter gun control in Russia.
The country’s FSB security service says it has prevented dozens of armed attacks on schools in recent years.
In February last year the FSB said it had detained two teenagers on suspicion of plotting an attack on a school in the city of Saratov with weapons and homemade explosives.
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