At least 13 people were killed, including seven children, in a shooting at a school in Izhevsk, a city of 650,000 in central Russia, the Russian Investigative Committee announced on Monday, according to which the assailant committed suicide.
“According to preliminary data, 13 people, including six adults and seven minors, were victims of the crime, 14 children and seven adults were injured,” the investigators said in a statement.
The suspect was wearing a “black sweater with Nazi symbolism and a balaclava,” the same source added, adding that “his identity is being established.” Investigators also released video showing the body of an individual lying on the ground, blood around the skull and wearing a black sweater with a red swastika.
“The police found the body of the man who opened fire. According to our information, he committed suicide,” he added.
An earlier report by the Russian Investigative Committee reported nine victims, including five children. Earlier, the Russian Interior Ministry had mentioned six victims and 20 wounded.
An open investigation
The governor of the region, Alexander Bretchalov, for his part indicated that “there are victims among the children and the wounded”, visibly moved, in a video posted on Telegram.
He was speaking outside School No. 88 in Izhevsk. Behind him, medical personnel could be seen running toward the building, some carrying a stretcher. The school’s website indicates that it has close to a thousand students and 80 teachers.
The events took place in the morning in this city just west of the Urals massif, a mountain range that separates European and Asian Russia. This city is still home to the factories that manufacture Kalashnikov assault rifles.
According to Alexander Bretchalov, “an unidentified person entered the school” before “killing the guard” and opening fire inside the school.
“The evacuation is complete” and “the entire perimeter is cordoned off,” he assured in his video, specifying that the Russian National Guard, the FSB security services and “the authorities in charge of the investigation” were already there.
According to the Ministry of Health, “14 ambulance teams” are also on the scene and “a group of doctors” will soon travel to Izhevsk “to help the victims.” An investigation into “murder” and “illegal carrying of weapons” was quickly opened and transferred to the Russian Investigative Committee, the country’s main investigative body.
Shootings on the rise in Russia
Monday’s shooting comes in a tense climate in many regions of Russia, against a background of military mobilization of hundreds of thousands of reservists for the Russian offensive in Ukraine. Also on Monday, a man opened fire on a Russian army recruitment center in Siberia, seriously wounding a soldier who worked there.
Once extremely rare, fatal shootings, especially in schools, have tended to become more numerous in Russia in recent years, to the point that President Vladimir Putin has become alarmed, seeing it as a phenomenon imported from the United States and a perverse effect. globalization, which led him to toughen the legislation on carrying weapons.
In April, a man opened fire in a kindergarten, killing two children and a teacher, before committing suicide, in the Ulyanovsk region, also in central Russia.
The deadliest shooting dates back to October 2018, when a high school student killed 19 people before committing suicide at a high school in Kerch, on the annexed Crimean peninsula.
Source: BFM TV
