Central Russia Mourns 17 Killed In School
By Stefan J. Bos, Chief International Correspondent Worthy News
MOSCOW (Worthy News) – Central Russia has begun a mourning period until September 29 after a gunman opened fire at a school, killing at least 17 people, most of them children.
Eleven pupils were among those shot dead, and 24 people were injured when the shooter attacked school No88 in the city of Izhevsk before he committed suicide, investigators said.
Russian President Vladimir Putin is “deeply mourning” the deaths and denounced Monday’s shooting as an “inhuman terrorist attack,” explained his spokesperson.
Governor of Udmurtia Alexander Brechalov declared three days of mourning and confirmed that the gunman shot himself.
The attacker – Artem Kazantsev, born in 1988 – was reportedly armed with two pistols.
The motives were not immediately clear surrounding Monday’s shootings in Izhevsk, the capital of the Udmurtia region, about 970 kilometers (600 miles) east of Moscow.
NAZI SYMPATHIES
Russia’s Investigative Committee, which handles major crimes, earlier said the gunman wore a balaclava and a black teeshirt with Nazi symbols. The committee explained that several teachers and security guards were also among the victims.
Kazantsev went on a shooting rampage in a school educating about 1,000 pupils between grades 1 and 11, suggesting that many victims were very young children.
Rescue and medical workers struggled with the aftermath, some running inside the school with stretchers. Russia’s Health Ministry said “14 ambulance teams” were working at the scene to help the injured, news agencies reported.
The shooting in Izhevsk, a city of 640,000, underscored broader concerns about school shootings in recent years in Russia.
Last year in May, a teenage gunman killed seven children and two adults in Kazan city. In April 2022, an armed man killed two children and a teacher at a kindergarten in the central Ulyanovsk region before committing suicide.
Monday’s attack came just hours after a man had opened fire and severely wounded a recruitment officer at an enlistment center in Siberia.
It came amid an ongoing mobilization of 300,000 reservists to fight in Ukraine despite growing public opposition.
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