Graz: Eight people were killed in a shooting at a school in the Austrian city of Graz on Tuesday, and the suspected perpetrator also died, according to police.
Police said on social network X that they believe the assailant acted alone. They said the assailant was a 21-year-old man who used two weapons.
The gunman was a former student at the school who did not finish his studies, according to interior minister. Police said they did not have information on the man’s motive, but added that he killed himself in a toilet after fatally shooting eight people. At least 12 others were wounded, some of them seriously.
City Mayor Elke Kahr described the events as a “terrible tragedy”, the Austria Press Agency reported. It said the fatalities were seven students and one adult. Kahr said that many people were taken to hospitals with injuries.
Special forces were among those sent to the BORG Dreierschutzengasse High School, about a kilometre from Graz’s historic centre, after a call at 10 am.
At 11.30 am, police wrote on social network X that the school had been evacuated.
Police were deployed in large numbers, with cops and other emergency vehicles guarding the area around the school and with at least one police helicopter flying above the area, according to photos published by the regional newspaper Kleine Zeitung.
Graz, Austria’s second-biggest city, is located in the southeast of the country and has about 3,00,000 inhabitants.
Austrian Chancellor Christian Stocker, who is going to Graz, said the shooting “is a national tragedy that deeply shocks our whole country”.
“There are no words for the pain and grief that all of us – the whole of Austria – feel now,” he wrote in a statement posted on X.
President Alexander Van der Bellen said that “this horror cannot be captured in words”. “These were young people who had their whole lives ahead of them. A teacher who accompanied them on their way,” he said.
Interior Minister Gerhard Karner was also on his way to Graz.
“Schools are symbols for youth, hope and the future,” European Commission President Ursula von der Leyen wrote on X. “It is hard to bear when schools become places of death and violence.”
