On Tuesday, nine people were killed when a gunman opened fire at a school in the Austrian city of Graz. The police informed that it was a former student of the same school who opened fire indiscriminately inside the school. The 21-year-old student was also found dead in a toilet of the school.
According to the police, he committed suicide by shooting indiscriminately.
Among the nine victims, six are women and three are men. Their identities and ages have not yet been released by the police. Police said they will not release more information about the victims until the preliminary investigation is complete.
Security officers of a police helicopter along with a specially trained 'cobra unit' reached the spot. Police said they responded to reports of gunfire at the high school building around 10 a.m. local time. After the incident, the stadium, about one and a half kilometers away, was opened as a safe gathering place for the students and their parents.
After decades in Graz, Austria's second largest city after Vienna, the city has been shocked by a major shooting incident. Austrian Chancellor Christian Stocker posted on social media and said that the shooting at the school in Graz was a national tragedy.
According to data from the Small Arms Survey, an independent research body based in Geneva, Austrian citizens are among the most heavily armed in the world, but mass shootings are rare. Two such incidents took place between 2000 and 2022.
A decade ago, a mass attack of this type took place in Graz. In that incident, a man drove a car into a crowd on a city street and later attacked bystanders with a knife, killing three people. About three dozen people were injured in that incident.
