At least eight killed in Russian school shooting - local authorities
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[May 11, 2021]
By Maxim Rodionov, Alexander Marrow and Tom Balmforth
MOSCOW (Reuters) -At least seven school
children and one teacher were killed on Tuesday and many more wounded
after a lone teenage gunman opened fire in a school in the Russian city
of Kazan, the mayor's office said, prompting a Kremlin call for tighter
gun controls.
Two children could be seen leaping from the third floor of the
four-storey School Number 175 to escape as gunshots rang out, in a video
filmed by an onlooker that was circulated by Russia's RIA news agency.
Calling the attack a big tragedy for the whole country, Rustam
Minnikhanov, the head of the wider Tatarstan region, said there was no
evidence that anyone else had been involved.
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"We have lost seven children...four boys and three girls. And 16 people,
12 children and four adults, are in hospital," Minnikhanov told state
TV.
"The terrorist has been arrested. He's a 19-year-old who was officially
registered as a gun owner."
Footage posted on social media showed a young man being pinned to the
ground outside the school building by a police officer.
An unconfirmed social media account belonging to the alleged shooter,
which was later blocked, contained posts in which he described himself
as a bloodthirsty deity and said he planned to kill a "huge number" of
people before shooting himself.
It was possible the toll would still rise. Six children were in grave
condition in hospital, RIA said. Earlier, Russian news agencies, citing
a health ministry source, said 11 people had died.
"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, quoted by Tatar
Inform, a local media outlet.
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![](../images/051121PIX/news_s55.jpg)
A view shows School Number 175 following a recent shooting in Kazan,
Russia May 11, 2021. REUTERS/Alexey Nasyrov
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A corridor inside the school was shown strewn with
debris, including smashed glass and broken doors, in unconfirmed
video circulated by the Baza media outlet. Another still image
showed a body on the floor of a blood-stained classroom.
Other footage showed emergency service vehicles parked outside the
school, with people running towards the building.
President Vladimir Putin ordered the head of the national guard to
draw up tighter gun regulations, the Kremlin said.
The alleged gunman was issued a permit for a Hatsan Escort PS
shotgun on April 28, Alexander Khinshtein, a lawmaker in the lower
house of parliament, wrote on social media.
Kazan is the capital of the Muslim-majority region of Tatarstan and
located around 450 miles (725 km) east of Moscow.
The incident was Russia's deadliest school shooting since 2018 when
a student at a college in Russian-annexed Crimea killed 20 people
before turning his gun on himself.
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(Writing by Andrew Osborn and Tom BalmforthEditing by John
Stonestreet and Peter Graff)
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