A gunman killed 13 people, including seven children, and wounded 21 other people in a school in central Russia on Monday, authorities said. Russia’s Investigative Committee said the shooting took place in a school in Izhevsk, a city about 960 kilometres (600 miles) east of Moscow in the Udmurtia region. Those wounded were 14 children and 7 adults, the Committee said.
Governor of Udmurtia Alexander Brechalov said in a video statement that the gunman shot himself. The school educated children between grades 1 and 11. It has been evacuated and the area around it has been fenced off, the governor said.
Izhevsk, a city of 640,000, is located west of the Ural mountains in central Russia. Local sources citing the authorities said that the death toll is likely to go up.
A local MP said that “the gunman was armed with two non-lethal pistols that had been altered to fire live ordnance”. The school administration said students and teachers had been evacuated.
Russian media have posted videos which appear to show panic inside the building where the shooting took place, reported the BBC. Some footage shows blood on a classroom floor and a bullet hole in a window, with children crouching down underneath desks.
The head of the region has announced a mourning period until Thursday. In May last year, a school shooting occurred in Kazan, Tatarstan, which claimed the lives of seven students and two teachers. The 19-year-old shooter was identified as a former student.
