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Gunman kills nine at school in Finland

The gunman who went on a rampage in a Finnish trade school yesterday has died after killing 10 people, local police chief Urpo Lintala said.

“Now the number of dead is 10 and the shooter has died. That means 11 people have died,” Lintala of the Kauhajoki police in southwestern Finland said.

Prime Minister Matti Vanhanen had earlier set the toll at nine dead.

The gunman had been questioned by police just one day before the attack about YouTube postings in which he is seen firing a handgun, Interior Minister Anne Holmlund said. He was released because there was no legal grounds to hold him, she said.

Witnesses said panic broke out as the hooded gunman entered the school in Kauhajoki, 336km northwest of Helsinki, and began firing. The shootings began just before 11am as about 150 students were at the school.

Finnish tabloid Ilta-Sanomat reported that police had identified the gunman as Matti Juhani Saari, a 22-year-old student. Authorities would only confirm that he was a student at the school, born in 1986.

“Within a short space of time I heard several dozen rounds of shots, in other words it was an automatic pistol,” janitor Jukka Forsberg told Finnish broadcaster YLE.

“I saw some female students who were wailing and moaning and one managed to escape out of the back door,” he said.

YLE meanwhile said two people had been injured and that the gunman, who has yet to be identified, may also have been carrying explosives on him.

Kauhajoki’s mayor confirmed reports that nine people had been killed.

“There are nine victims,” Kauhajoki Mayor Antti Rantakokko said. “The shooter is still alive as far as I know.”

Superintendent Vesa Nyrhinen of the local police said the gunman “was wounded by his own bullets.”

HEAD WOUNDS

The gunman was being taken to a hospital in Tampere, a two-hour drive from the scene of shooting, the hospital’s medical director Matti Lehto said.

He also said a woman with a gunshot wound to the head was also heading to the hospital.

College rector Tapio Varmola told YLE the school had 150 students at the time and the shooting started in a classroom where 20 people were taking an exam.

Yesterday’s rampage happened almost a year after an 18-year-old gunman killed eight people and himself at a school in southern Finland, an attack that triggered a fierce debate about gun laws in a country with deep-rooted traditions of hunting in the sub-Arctic wilderness.

After that rampage, the government said it would raise the minimum age for buying guns from 15 to 18, but insisted there was no need for sweeping changes to Finland’s gun laws.

YOUTUBE POSTINGS

Finnish media said YouTube clips of a man firing a gun appeared to be linked to the shooting. In one of them, a young man wearing a leather jacket fires several shots in rapid succession with a handgun at what appears to be a shooting range.

The posting included a message saying: “Whole life is war and whole life is pain. And you will fight alone in your personal war.”
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