Get all your news in one place.
100’s of premium titles.
One app.
Start reading
Reuters
Reuters
World

Swastika-wearing ex-pupil kills 15 in Russian school shooting

Police officers secure the area near a school after a gunman opened fire there, in Izhevsk, Russia September 26, 2022. REUTERS/Stringer

A gunman with a swastika on his teeshirt killed 15 people, including 11 children, and wounded 24 at a school in Russia on Monday before committing suicide, investigators said.

The attacker, a man in his early thirties who was named by authorities as Artem Kazantsev, killed two security guards and then opened fire on students and teachers at School Number 88 in Izhevsk, where he had once been a pupil.

Russia's Investigative Committee, which handles major crimes, said it was looking into the perpetrator's suspected neo-Nazi links.

People bring flowers and toys to a makeshift memorial for the victims of a school shooting in Izhevsk, Russia September 26, 2022. REUTERS/Stringer

"Currently investigators...are conducting a search of his residence and studying the personality of the attacker, his views and surrounding milieu," the committee said in a statement. "Checks are being made into his adherence to neo-fascist views and Nazi ideology."

Investigators released a video showing the man's body lying in a classroom with overturned furniture and papers strewn on the bloodstained floor. He was dressed all in black, with a red swastika in a circle drawn on his teeshirt.

The Investigative Committee said that of the 24 people wounded, all but two were children. Regional governor Alexander Brechalov said surgeons had carried out a number of operations.

Police and members of emergency services work near the scene of a school shooting in Izhevsk, Russia September 26, 2022. REUTERS/Stringer

He said the attacker had been registered with a "psycho-neurological" treatment facility. Investigators said the man was armed with two pistols and a large supply of ammunition.

Kremlin spokesman Dmitry Peskov said President Vladimir Putin "deeply mourns" the deaths. He described the incident as "a terrorist act by a person who apparently belongs to a neo-fascist organisation or group".

He said doctors, psychologists and neurosurgeons had been sent on Putin's orders to the location of the shooting in Izhevsk, about 970 km (600 miles) east of Moscow.

A police officer secures area after a school shooting in Izhevsk, Russia September 26, 2022. REUTERS/Stringer

Russia has seen several school shootings in recent years.

In May 2021, a teenage gunman killed seven children and two adults in the city of Kazan. In September last year, a student armed with a hunting rifle shot dead at least six people at a university in the Urals city of Perm.

In April 2022, an armed man killed two children and a teacher at a kindergarten in the central Ulyanovsk region before committing suicide.

Police and members of emergency services work near the scene of a school shooting in Izhevsk, Russia September 26, 2022. REUTERS/Stringer

In 2018, an 18-year-old student killed 20 people, mostly fellow pupils, in a mass shooting at a college in Russian-occupied Crimea, which Moscow seized from Ukraine in 2014.

(Reporting by Reuters; writing by Mark Trevelyan, editing by Frank Jack Daniel, Angus MacSwan and Nick Macfie)

Sign up to read this article
Read news from 100’s of titles, curated specifically for you.
Already a member? Sign in here
Related Stories
Top stories on inkl right now
One subscription that gives you access to news from hundreds of sites
Already a member? Sign in here
Our Picks
Fourteen days free
Download the app
One app. One membership.
100+ trusted global sources.