At least 13 people were killed, including seven children, when a gunman wearing a T-shirt with a red swastika opened fire on Monday at a school in the central Russian city of Izhevsk, the Russian investigative committee reported. The shooter, who was allegedly armed with two guns, also killed himself.
Among the dead were a school security guard and two teachers. The investigative committee said 21 people were injured – 14 children and seven adults.
The attack happened at school No. 88 in Izhevsk, the capital of the Udmurt Republic, a region in central Russia west of the Ural Mountains. The investigative committee identified the shooter as Artem Kazantsev, a 34-year-old local resident and a former student at the school. Investigators searched his home.
The shooting did not appear to be linked to a spate of violence in recent days, following Russian President Vladimir Putin’s declaration of partial military mobilization. In one recent incident, a young Russian shot dead the chief of a local military enlistment office in Siberia’s Irkutsk region on Monday.
The school shooting in Izhevsk, on the other hand, could have been a hate crime.
The gunman, dressed in black trousers, a black jacket, the swastika T-shirt and a black balaclava, shot the school security guard before entering the school and opening fire on children, many of whom were as young as 7 years old were, according to local media accounts.
“An unknown assailant broke into school number 88, killed the security guard and started shooting,” said the head of the Udmurt Republic Alexander Brechalov before the assailant was identified. “There are victims among the children. The attacker committed suicide.”
Panicked children fled the school during the attack as police officers, guns raised, charged up stairwells and school corridors, according to video broadcast by independent local media.
According to videos released by local media, children silently huddled in classrooms with their teachers. In another video, gunshots were heard as the children and staff hid.
A seventh-grade boy at the school jumped from a third-story window to escape the shooting and broke his leg, Russian newspaper Moskovsky Komomolets reported.
Clips of ammunition piled on a desk next to the gunman’s body in pictures of the scene released by local media had the word “hate” written in red paint. Two pistols near his body had braided cords with the words Columbine, Dylan, and Eric on them, a reference to the 1999 Columbine school massacre in which 13 people were killed by Eric Harris and Dylan Klebold.
Kremlin spokesman Dmitry Peskov called the attack “an inhuman act of terrorism” and said Putin was deeply saddened by it. Peskov said the president called the head of the Udmurian Republic and other officials and “given all the necessary instructions.”
Putin has insisted that the war in Ukraine aims to eliminate “Nazis” from eastern Ukraine, and he and his supporters have unfoundedly labeled the elected government in Kyiv as a “Nazi regime”.
However, Russia has long had far-right neo-Nazi elements within its own population. It was not clear whether the gunman who attacked the Izhevsk school was a member of such a group in Russia.
School shootings in Russia are relatively uncommon compared to the United States but could be becoming more frequent, with three mass shootings at educational institutions since May last year.
A little over a year ago, an 18-year-old university student, Timur Bekmansurov, killed six people and wounded 47 at Perm State University.
In May last year, 21-year-old Ilnaz Galyaviev killed nine people, including seven children, at a school in Kazan, Tatarstan.
In 2018, Vladimir Roslyakov, a fourth-year student at Kerch Polytechnic College, killed 21 people and injured 67 in Russia’s worst school shooting.
War in Ukraine: What you need to know
The newest: Russian President Vladimir Putin announced a “partial mobilization” of troops in a Sept. 21 address to the nation, describing the move as an attempt to defend Russian sovereignty against a West trying to use Ukraine as a tool to “divide and destroy Russia”. .” Follow our live updates here.
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