Seven children, two teachers killed in shooting in Russia

By ANA Reporter On May 11, 2021

At least nine people – seven students and two teachers – have been killed and several others injured in a shooting at a school in south-west Russia.

An empty classroom with chairs and desks — A 19-year-old male suspect has been detained after a shooting at a school in Russia in which at least nine people were killed. There was an explosion before the attack was carried out. File photo: Pixabay

PRETORIA, May 11 (ANA) – Seven children and two teachers have been killed in a shooting at a school in the Russian city of Kazan, the New York Times reported on Tuesday.

Footage posted on social media showed students jumping from windows and running to safety as shots rang out. There was also smoke coming from the large white building.

Videos of the aftermath taken inside the school showed doors torn from their frames and debris in the hallways.

Vyacheslav Yegoshin, a 15-year-old who witnessed the shooting from outside the building because he was late for class on Tuesday morning, told the publication that students and teachers on the upper floors barricaded themselves in classrooms and waited for help.

“It was scary, and everybody was crying,” Yegoshin was quoted as saying in a telephone interview.

A witness told the Russian TASS news agency that there was an explosion before the attack was carried out.

“We heard the sounds of explosions at the beginning of the second lesson. All the teachers locked the children in the classrooms. The shooting was on the third floor,” said one teacher who spoke to Tatar Inform, a local media publication.

A 19-year-old male suspect has been detained, the BBC reported.

Sky News cited local media reports as saying an unconfirmed social media account belonging to the alleged gunman, which was later blocked, contained posts in which he described himself as a bloodthirsty deity and that he planned to kill a huge number of people before shooting himself.

The New York Times wrote that a member of Russia’s parliament, Aleksandr Khinshtein, said the attacker had obtained a gun licence on April 28 and had used a pump-action shotgun in the attack.

Russian President Vladimir Putin will move swiftly on new measures to restrict gun ownership in the country, the Washington Times reported.

The Kremlin said it will revisit rules and regulations around private gun ownership in Russia, the US publication added.

– African News Agency (ANA); Editing by Yaron Blecher