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A teenage gunman in Russia killed at least seven children and a teacher — and wounded at least 21 others — when he opened fire Tuesday in a school in the central city of Kazan, according to reports.
Some students managed to escape from school No. 175 during the bloodbath in the capital of the republic of Tatarstan, while others were trapped inside, local media reported.
Gov. Rustam Minnikhanov said four boys and three girls, all eighth-grade students, were killed.
“The terrorist has been arrested, (he is) 19 years old. A firearm is registered in his name. Other accomplices haven’t been established. An investigation is underway,” Minnikhanov said after visiting the site of the carnage.
Footage posted on social media showed a young man being pinned to the ground outside the school building by a cop.
Health officials said 21 people have been hospitalized, including 18 children, six of whom are in intensive care.
Russia’s state RIA Novosti news agency reported earlier that 11 people had been killed. There was no way to immediately account for the differing death tolls.
Elena, a Kazan resident who said she was outside the school, told the Echo of Moscow radio station that authorities were removing people from the building, Agence France-Presse reported.
“Parents are crying, medics are giving out medicine. People are hysterical,” she told the station.
President Vladimir Putin expressed his condolences to families of the victims, wished a speedy recovery to the wounded and ordered the government to provide them with all the necessary assistance.
He also ordered National Guard chief Victor Zolotov to revise the regulations on types of weapons allowed for civilian use in light of the attack about 430 miles east of Moscow.
“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, Putin’s spokesman Dmitry Peskov told reporters.
Russia has relatively few school shootings due to normally tight security in education facilities and the difficulty of buying firearms legally, AFP reported.
In November 2019, a 19-year-old student in Blagoveshchensk opened fire in his college, killing a classmate and injuring three other people before shooting himself dead.
In October 2018, a teenager shot dead 20 people at the Kerch technical college in Crimea, the peninsula Russia annexed from Ukraine in 2014. The 18-year-old then shot himself dead at the site.
He was shown on camera footage wearing a similar T-shirt to Eric Harris, one of the killers in the 1999 Columbine High School shooting that left 13 people dead.
With Post Wires
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