2023-12-22 13:49:35
Witnesses have described the scenes of panic experienced this Thursday inside and outside the Charles University of Prague, when gunshots began to ring out in the historic center of the city, unleashing chaos and fear in an area full of locals and tourists.
The Prague attack is the worst suffered by an educational center in the world this year
The shooting began shortly after Jakob Weizman, a journalist and master’s student, arrived at the university to take an Albanian exam. He and his teacher were alone in a small classroom. “During the exam I heard gunshots and screams,” he says. They stood paralyzed not knowing what to do. “Eventually the police started showing up and there were more shots and screams.”
Weizman closed the store and frantically improvised a barricade with tables, chairs and whatever he could find. “I think the person who was shooting went from inside the faculty to outside, to the balcony, from where he was shooting at people,” he tells The Guardian. “There were people trying to escape over the ledge.”
Currently stuck inside my classroom in Prague. Shooter is dead, but we are waiting to be evacuated. Praying to make it out alive.
Locked the door before the shooter tried to open it. Fucking hell. pic.twitter.com/wYyhOe5U6p
— Jakob Weizman (@jakobweizman) December 21, 2023
There are several images of students who appear to be crouching on a ledge near the roof trying to hide from the gunman. According to a later police report, at least 14 people were killed and 24 injured. The attacker also died.
Weizman said that shortly after raising the barricade he heard someone trying to open the door from outside. “I went to all the classrooms to see if there were people to shoot,” he says. “We closed the door just five minutes before he tried to open it.” The 25-year-old student and his teacher stayed there for approximately an hour, sending text messages to their loved ones and asking them to notify the police that the classroom they were locked in was 309A.
“All I was trying to do was tell people what was going on, calling my mom, calling my girlfriend,” Weizman recalls. “If it’s the end, you try to say what you can before… I don’t know. It is a situation you are never prepared for.” Things seemed to calm down a bit after the many gunshots and screams they heard at the beginning. “Then there was a lot more screaming and gunshots, 30 minutes later.” Finally the police managed to get them both out: “When we left, there was blood all over the faculty.”
Outside the university, police cars and ambulances sped across the 14th-century Charles Bridge. The city center, where hours before a crowd was roaming the crowded Christmas market stalls, had been emptied by security forces.
“We heard loud shots,” Joe Hyland, 18, told the BBC. “But we didn’t give it much importance until we heard screams, people running away, sirens; “So we thought it was serious,” he added. Hyland, originally from Truro (Cornwall), was on holiday in Prague with a group of friends. They couldn’t run because one of them was on crutches, but they ran away as fast as they could.
Ivo Havranek, 43, also did not initially pay attention to the loud knocks he heard. He thought it was a noise made by rowdy tourists. Or the sounds of a nearby movie set. “Suddenly, students and teachers came running out of the building,” he told the Reuters news agency.
“I walked through the crowd without realizing what was happening, I was not prepared to admit that something like this could happen in Prague,” he said. Until he saw the police officers with automatic rifles and understood that things were serious. “They yelled at me to run away.”
Tom Leese, 34, and Rachael, 31, were on their honeymoon having drinks at the Slivovitz Museum, near where the shooting occurred. Leese told PA Media that a police officer entered the museum and started shouting loudly. When he asked for a translation, they told him there was a shooter shooting and to stay inside and stay low. “The employees were very calm, they immediately turned off all the lights and asked us to remain calm.” The couple, from Merstham (Surrey), stayed inside the museum for more than an hour while the sirens sounded outside.
Petr Nedoma, director of the Rudolfinum Gallery — located in a concert hall across from Palach Square, where the Faculty of Philosophy and Letters of Charles University is located, where the shooting occurred — said on Czech television that he had seen the attacker. “In the gallery I saw a young man who had some type of weapon in his hand, like an automatic weapon, and who was shooting at the Manes Bridge repeatedly, with some interruptions; Then I saw him shoot, raise his hands and throw the gun into the street, which was left on the pedestrian crossing,” he said.
Czech police later reported that the perpetrator of the attack was a 24-year-old student at Charles University who had been influenced by similar shootings abroad and who shot himself to death in the hallway of the building where he had broken in while being chased by the attackers. agents.
After speaking with police, Weizman said he had to deal with retrieving belongings left in the exam room during his hasty evacuation. He was getting ready to do it. “I don’t think he can ever set foot on campus again,” he admits. “It didn’t happen to me in 15 years living in the United States, it happened to me for the first time in the Czech Republic.”
Translation by Francisco de Zárate
#left #blood #faculty