A gunman with a swastika on his teeshirt killed 15 folks, together with 11 youngsters, and wounded 24 at a college in Russia on Monday earlier than committing suicide, investigators stated.
The attacker, a person in his early thirties who was named by authorities as Artem Kazantsev, killed two safety guards after which opened hearth on college students and lecturers at Faculty Quantity 88 in Izhevsk, the place he had as soon as been a pupil.
Russia’s Investigative Committee, which handles main crimes, stated it was wanting into the perpetrator’s suspected neo-Nazi hyperlinks.
“At present investigators…are conducting a search of his residence and finding out the character of the attacker, his views and surrounding milieu,” the committee stated in an announcement. “Checks are being made into his adherence to neo-fascist views and Nazi ideology.”
Investigators launched a video displaying the person’s physique mendacity in a classroom with overturned furnishings and papers strewn on the bloodstained flooring. He was dressed all in black, with a crimson swastika in a circle drawn on his teeshirt.
The Investigative Committee stated that of the 24 folks wounded, all however two have been youngsters. Regional governor Alexander Brechalov stated surgeons had carried out quite a lot of operations.
He stated the attacker had been registered with a “psycho-neurological” therapy facility. Investigators stated the person was armed with two pistols and a big provide of ammunition.
Kremlin spokesman Dmitry Peskov stated President Vladimir Putin “deeply mourns” the deaths. He described the incident as “a terrorist act by an individual who apparently belongs to a neo-fascist organisation or group”.
He stated medical doctors, psychologists and neurosurgeons had been despatched on Putin’s orders to the situation of the taking pictures in Izhevsk, about 970 km (600 miles) east of Moscow.
Russia has seen a number of faculty shootings in recent times.
In Might 2021, a teenage gunman killed seven youngsters and two adults within the metropolis of Kazan. In September final yr, a pupil armed with a searching rifle shot useless not less than six folks at a college within the Urals metropolis of Perm.
In April 2022, an armed man killed two youngsters and a trainer at a kindergarten within the central Ulyanovsk area earlier than committing suicide.
In 2018, an 18-year-old pupil killed 20 folks, principally fellow pupils, in a mass taking pictures at a school in Russian-occupied Crimea, which Moscow seized from Ukraine in 2014.