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Fourteen folks had been killed and greater than 20 others wounded in a capturing rampage at Charles College within the Czech Republic on Thursday, the authorities stated. The gunman, a 24-year-old scholar in world historical past on the college, additionally killed himself after the capturing spree in central Prague.
The police say they consider he first killed his father of their household residence in a village close to the city of Kladno, exterior of Prague, Ondrej Moravcik, a spokesman for the Czech police, stated in an interview. A few of the injured had been in crucial situation, he added.
The gunman was partly recognized by the police as David Ok. European police officers usually give solely a primary title and final preliminary for privateness causes. Talking at a information convention in Prague, the chief of the nationwide police drive, Martin Vondrasek, stated the assailant “bought impressed by the same horrible occasion overseas.” He didn’t specify the place.
However the authorities stated they didn’t consider that the gunman’s actions had been related to worldwide or home terrorism.
Radek Simik, an affiliate professor in linguistics at Charles College, stated he was in the midst of a lesson in his classroom on the primary flooring when he and his 5 college students heard shouting coming from the hall.
“We thought it was a drunk man or a rioter or one thing,” he stated. Because the sound bought louder, he realized it was the authorities saying: “Police! Get out!” Then, a couple of minutes later, the capturing began, and he and his college students rushed out of the constructing.
“The capturing continued once we had been standing exterior of the constructing,” he stated. He and his college students watched the police perform the injured and others who gave the impression to be lifeless, he stated.
The authorities had been investigating whether or not violent, expletive-laden Russian-language messages posted on Telegram beneath the title David Kozak had been related to the gunman, the police chief added. One message stated that two mass shootings in Russia had supplied inspiration — one this month at a college in Bryansk close to the border with Ukraine and the second in 2021 in Kazan, capital of the Russian area of Tatarstan.
“I used to be very impressed by Alina … very a lot,” a message posted on Dec. 10 stated, three days after a 14-year-old Russian woman, Alina Afanaskina, opened hearth on her classmates, killing two of them, with a pump shotgun in Bryansk. However, the message continued: “She actually didn’t kill sufficient. I’ll attempt to repair that.”
One other put up the identical day stated: “I all the time wished to kill. I believed I might be a maniac sooner or later.”
A message on Telegram posted beneath the title of David Kozak a day earlier stated, “This will probably be my diary as I am going towards college capturing.” That message was edited on Thursday, however it’s not clear how.
The channel went “non-public” late Thursday after the capturing. By that time, David Ok. was already lifeless.
If the gunman and the Telegram author had been the identical particular person, it was not instantly clear how a native-born Czech who grew up in a small village in Central Bohemia would have acquired a mastery of the Russian language, together with faddish slang utilized by younger Russians on-line and a wealthy vocabulary of swear phrases.
The governor of the Prague area, Bohuslav Svoboda, stated the gunman had fallen from the roof of the college’s school of arts constructing after opening hearth on Jan Palach Sq., an space of manicured lawns adjoining to the Vltava River that cuts by means of the Czech capital.
The police stated the humanities constructing, in Prague’s Outdated City, had been evacuated. The sq. subsequent to it was sealed off. Movies posted on social media confirmed folks working away.
Mr. Moravcik, the spokesman for the Czech police, stated of the suspect: “He had a variety of weapons, particular military weapons, however all of those weapons had been authorized.”
The inside minister, Vit Rakusan, stated on social media that numerous weapons and ammunition had been found within the school constructing. He added that the police believed it was doubtless that the assailant was additionally chargeable for a earlier double murder in Prague, given what was discovered at his residence. No additional particulars had been launched.
The episode on Thursday may have been a lot deadlier had the police not already been on the scene when the capturing started. Officers had info suggesting that an assault on the college was imminent and had evacuated considered one of its buildings, Mr. Moravcik stated. The police then bought info indicating that an assailant was in a special constructing and moved there to start out evacuating folks. Quickly after, the capturing started, he stated. No different info was launched.
Mass shootings are uncommon within the Central European nation. The capturing prompted the prime minister, Petr Fiala, to chop quick a visit to the town of Olomouc within the east of the Czech Republic and rush again to Prague for an emergency authorities assembly Thursday night.
It was Europe’s worst mass capturing since back-to-back massacres in Serbia in Might killed 17 folks and wounded greater than 20. These shootings in Serbia set off months of road protests towards President Aleksandar Vucic. And the controversy over stop future violence was a significant difficulty in a snap common election final Sunday.
President Petr Pavel of the Czech Republic stated in a put up on X that he was “shocked by the occasions on the school of arts of Charles College.” The college, The Related Press reported, deliberate to tighten safety instantly.
Although typically very peaceable, the Czech capital was on edge even earlier than the killings, after a father and his child daughter had been discovered lifeless from gunshot wounds final week in Klanovice forest, a rich space east of Prague.
“I specific my deepest condolences to the households of the victims and to the Czech folks as a complete,” Ursula von der Leyen, president of the European Fee, stated in a put up on X on Thursday. “We stand and mourn with you.”
In 2019, a gunman killed six folks in a hospital’s ready room within the japanese Czech metropolis of Ostrava. That had been the deadliest capturing since 2015, when a gunman killed eight folks at a restaurant in Uhersky Brod, about 180 miles southeast of Prague.
The sq. the place the capturing occurred is called after Jan Palach, a 20-year-old scholar who set himself on hearth in 1969 to protest the invasion of what was then Czechoslovakia by troops from the Soviet Union and its allies within the Warsaw Pact. He died three days later, turning into a martyr to the anti-communist trigger.
On the time of his demise, he was finding out historical past at Charles College, which was based in 1348 and is likely one of the world’s oldest universities.
Barbora Petrova and Amanda E. Newman contributed reporting.
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