A gunman has opened fire at a school in central Russia, killing at least 17 people and injuring 24, Russian officials say.
Of the 24 injured, all but two were children.
The victims include 11 children at the school of about 1,000 pupils in the city of Izhevsk.
The gunman who was a former student of the school killed himself at the scene.
Videos posted online appear to show panic inside the building where the shooting took place, with children and adults running along corridors.
Other footage shows blood on a classroom floor and a bullet hole in a window, with children crouching down underneath desks.
The attack is the latest in school shootings over the last few years in Russia.
The country has seen a number of incidents where either a current student or a graduate has returned to their school and tried to kill as many people as possible.
Previous attacks were carried out with legally obtained hunting rifles, when getting a licence for such weapons was easily accessible.
After the Kazan school shooting in May 2021 and the Perm University attack in September, the authorities toughened the laws.
But in this latest incident the attacker used pistols which he could only have obtained illegally on the black market.
The gunman was dressed in black and had inscribed the word “hate” on his weapons – similar to the 1999 shooting at the Columbine High School in the US.
Earlier this year, Russia’s security services banned a group they claimed existed, called The Columbine Movement, which according to them was linked to the Kazan and Perm attacks.
(0)
