Nine dead in school shooting in Kazan, say Russian officials
Seven students and two staff members were killed on Tuesday in Russia deadliest school shooting in years when a gunman opened fire in the city of Kazan.
Rustam Minnikhanov, the president of the Tatarstan republic where Kazan is the capital, said four male and three female eighth-grade students died in “a great tragedy for the whole country”. Minnikhanov’s press service later said a teacher and another female staff member were also killed. Eighth-grade children in Russia are 13 and 14 years old.
The gunman, identified as 19-yearold Ilnaz Galyaviev, wrote on social media before the attack that he felt “like a God” and planned to kill a “huge number” of people. Security camera footage showed Galyaviev approaching School 175 in Kazan on Tuesday morning wearing a black mask and carrying a gun with a long barrel.
Footage posted on social media showed students escaping from the building by jumping out of a third-story window and emergency responders carrying the wounded to ambulances. Several students described locking classroom doors and hiding on the third floor of the school as Galyaviev attempted to break in.
Heavily-armed police raided the school and arrested Galyaviev, who was pictured being pinned to the ground outside the building by a police officer.
Minnikhanov described Galyaviev as a “terrorist” and saidthat the firearm used in the shooting was registered in the suspect’s name. Galyaviev had recently received a licence for a semiautomatic shotgun, a Russian MP told journalists. “Other accomplices haven’t been established, an investigation is under way,” Minnikhanov said after visiting the school, adding that security had been restored.
According to Tatarstan health officials, 21 people were taken to hospital with wounds after the attack, including 18 children, six of whom were in intensive care. Officials have not publicly identified the victims. Children as young as seven were injured in the attack, police have said.
Galyaviev, who Russian media have reported was a graduate of the school, appeared to have acted alone. In a videotaped police interrogation later leaked online, the shirtless Galyaviev told a questioner that he had “realised I was God two months ago … during the summer a monster awoke in me”.
He had been studying programming at a college in Kazan before dropping out last month, Russian media reported.
The Russian president, Vladimir Putin, expressed his condolences to families of the victims.
He also ordered Viktor Zolotov, head of Russia’s National Guard, to revise the regulations on types of weapons allowed for civilian use in light of the attack. Russia has fairly tough restrictions on obtaining firearms, requiring potential gun owners to pass a battery of tests before receiving permission to buy a smoothbore weapon, such as a shotgun. Permission to buy a rifle requires a further five-year waiting period.
Authorities said additional security measures had been put into place in all schools in Kazan, about 430 miles east of Moscow.
While school shootings are relatively rare in Russia, there have been several violent attacks on schools in recent years, mostly carried out by students.
One of the last major shootings
took place in Russian-annexed Crimea in 2018, when a student at a college killed 20 people before killing himself.
Putin similarly ordered a toughening of Russia’s gun-control measures after that incident. But a review by the Russian newspaper Kommersant showed that efforts to keep tabs on gun-owners’ whereabouts or to raise the ownership age to 21 had failed. After Tuesday’s attack, Tatiana Moskalkova, Russia’s ombudswoman for human rights, called for the gun ownership age to be raised to 21, except for those who have served in the armed forces.