Many dead after shooting in Russian school Current Asia | DW

Russia I School shooting in Izhevsk

The reported death toll in a Russian school shooting has risen to 17. According to the investigative authority responsible, eleven children and six adults died. The Interior Ministry of the Udmurt Republic also assumes that more than 20 people were injured.

Local investigators also confirmed the information from the Russian Interior Ministry, according to which the alleged shooter committed suicide. The man is said to be a 34-year-old former student at the school who wore a black sweater “with Nazi symbols” and covered his face during the crime in Ischewsk. He is said to have fired two Makarov pistols. They now want to check whether he “attached to neo-fascist positions and Nazi ideology”. According to information from the governor responsible, Alexander Bretschalow, the alleged perpetrator is said to have been being treated for mental problems. He’s also been fined before.

A “terrorist attack”

However, Russia’s head of state Vladimir Putin has already described the assassination as a “terrorist attack” and the alleged perpetrator as a member of a “neo-fascist group”. According to Kremlin spokesman Dmitry Peskov, the president also spoke to the regional leadership and members of the government, who are supposed to be taking care of the injured. The Ministry of Civil Protection flies doctors, psychologists and other specialists to Udmurtia.

Russia I School shooting in Izhevsk

Concerned people wait behind the cordon for news of the attack

Ischewsk, around 1200 kilometers east of Moscow, has almost 650,000 inhabitants. The city is west of the Urals, which separates the European and Asian parts of Russia.

Gun attacks used to be rare in Russia. However, they have increased in recent years. President Putin had spoken of a phenomenon imported from the USA and criticized such acts of violence as a side effect of globalization.

In April, a man shot dead two children and a teacher at an elementary school in the Olyanovsk region before committing suicide. In 2018, 19 people were killed in a gun attack by a student in a high school in Kerch on the annexed Crimean Peninsula.

kle/nob/djo/wa (afp, dpa, rtre)


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