At least eight people were killed in a pull in a school In the Austrian city of Graz on Tuesday, and the alleged attacker also died, said the mayor of the city.
Mayor Elke Kahr described events as a “terrible tragedy”, the Austria Reported the news agency. He added that deaths were seven students and an adult. Kahr said many people had been taken to injured hospitals.
Police said they thought the attacker acted alone.
The special forces were one of the people sent to the Lycée Borg Dreierschützengasse, about a kilometer (more than half a million) from the historic center of Graz, after a call at 10 a.m. to 11:30 a.m., the police wrote on the social network X that the school had been evacuated and that everyone had been taken to a safe meeting point. They wrote that the situation was “secure” and that there is no longer any danger.
The police were deployed in large numbers, with the police and other emergency vehicles keeping the area around the school and with at least one police helicopter flying above the area, according to photos published by the regional newspaper Kleine Zeitung.
Get daily national news
Get the best news of the day, the titles of political, economic and current affairs, delivered in your reception box once a day.
Graz, the second largest city in Austria, is located in the south-east of the country and has around 300,000 inhabitants.
Austrian Chancellor Christian Stocker said that the shooting “is a national tragedy that deeply shocks our country”.
“There are no words for pain and sorrow that all of us – all of Austria – we feel now,” he wrote in a statement published on X.
President Alexander Van der Bellen said that “this horror cannot be captured with words”.
“These are young people who had their whole lives in front of them. A teacher who accompanied them on their way,” he said.
The Minister of the Interior, Gerhard Karner, was on the way to Graz.
“Schools are symbols for young people, hope and the future,” wrote the president of the European Commission Ursula von der Leyen on X. “It is difficult to bear when schools become places of death and violence.”
& Copy 2025 the Canadian press