At least thirteen people including seven children were killed by an armed assailant in a school in the city of Izhevsk in Russia, investigators said on Monday September 26, who added that the shooter had 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 Investigative Committee of Russia said in a statement. The suspect was wearing a sweater “black with Nazi symbolism and a balaclava”added the same source, specifying that “His identity is being established”.
On-site security services
“The police have found the body of the man who opened fire. According to our information, he committed suicide.he added. “There are victims among the children and injured people”had indicated a little earlier the governor of the region, Alexander Bretchalov, visibly moved, in a video.
He was speaking outside School No. 88 in Izhevsk. Behind him, medical personnel could be seen running into the building. According to him, “an unidentified person entered the school” before “kill the guard” and to open fire, especially on children. “The evacuation is over” et “the entire perimeter is cordoned off”added the governor, specifying that the Russian National Guard, the security services of the FSB and “investigating authorities” were already there.
Earlier in the morning, the Russian Interior Ministry had indicated that « to the police (had) received a message about a shooting at school No. 88 in Izhevsk”. “The police immediately went to the scene”had added this source.
Birthplace of the Kalashnikov
Ijevsk, a city of nearly 650,000 inhabitants, is the capital of the Republic of Oudmurtia in the center of the country, to the west of the Ural massif which marks the separation between European Russia and Asian Russia. The city experienced a major industrial boom after the Second World War, notably thanks to Mikhail Kalashnikov, inventor of the famous eponymous assault rifle, who opened a factory there.
Once extremely rare, fatal shootings, especially in schools, have tended to become more numerous in Russia in recent years. President Vladimir Putin was alarmed by this, seeing in it a phenomenon imported from the United States and a perverse effect of globalization.