Mass shooting at Austria high school leaves at least 10 people dead, marking the country's deadliest incident outside of wars in recent history.
The fatalities in the nation's second most populous city of Graz include the shooter. Officials reported that the incident took place in the morning at the BORG Dreierschutzengasse secondary school.
Austria High School Shooting
Police were called to the school at around 10:00 a.m. after some people in the area heard gunshots. The city of Graz is found southwest of Vienna and features historic landmarks, such as the Uhrturm, also known as Clock Tower. It has a population of 300,000, and it has the largest number of people after Vienna.
Graz is known for its universities and colleges and is a demographically diverse city. Foreign nationals make up about a quarter of the region's population and the four largest groups are Bosnians, Croatians, Germans, and Romanians, according to Aljazeera.
When reporting the news about the incident, officials said that the people who were killed included at least seven students and two adults. On the other hand, police noted that there were at least 30 other people who were injured.
The suspect was later identified as a 21-year-old former student who is believed to have been a victim of bullying in the past. The suspect was seen carrying a pistol and a shotgun before opening fire at students in two classrooms, one of which had been his old classroom.
After the shooting, Austrian Chancellor Christian Stocker cleared his schedule to travel to Graz and declared three days to be set aside for national mourning. In a social media post, he described the incident as a national tragedy that shook the entire country, the New York Times reported.
A National Tragedy
On the other hand, Austrian President Alexander Van der Bellen said the young people who were killed in the shooting had their whole lives ahead of them. He added that there was nothing that could ease the pain felt by their families and loved ones at this moment.
When police responded to the scene of the shooting, they found the alleged shooter inside a school restroom dead from a self-inflicted gun wound. They believe that the suspect acted alone when he conducted the mass shooting.
The only information that officials released about the suspect was his age and the fact that he possessed a license for the guns he used in the incident. The situation comes as Austria has one of the most heavily armed civilian populations in Europe, with an estimated 30 firearms for every 100 people, as per NPR.
