Finland shooting kills 10 students

A student shot and killed 10 people at a vocational school on Tuesday, and then shot himself inflicting wounds of which he later died.

The 22-year-old Matti Saari started a fire in the school in the town of Kauhajoki, a second such attack in Finland in less than a year. He died later in TampereUniversityHospital.

"A cold-blooded shooter entered the building with an automatic pistol and started cutting down students," said Jukka Forsberg, a maintenance man at the school. "He also shot towards me, did not say anything and once the bullets started to whizz by I started running for my life."

According to the police, identifying the bodies was slow because of the blaze started by the gunman. "The site has suffered from fires and the victims have been partially burned," said police Chief Superintendent Urpo Lintala.

Tuesday's shooting echoed last year's rampage at Finland's Jokela high school, where student Pekka-Eric Auvinen killed six fellow students, the school nurse and principal after broadcasting his intenet on YouTube. Saari also posted a video of himself wielding a gun on the internet, prompting police to question him on Monday. However, officers did not confiscate the gun because they decided he had not made specific threats, said Interior Minister Anne Holmlund a news conference.

The event has Prime Minister Matti Vanhanen considering banning private handguns altogether, saying that stricter European-wide gun laws was not enough.

Findland ranks third after the United States and Yemen in gun ownership rates, according to a study conducted by the Geneva-based Graduate Institute of International Studies. (AO)

Source: Reuters