Eighteen people were killed in a bloodbath at a German school yesterday when an expelled former pupil returned with a gun and opened fire, police said.
Police said the 19-year-old gunman shot dead three pupils, a policeman and 13 adults believed to include several teachers, before killing himself.
Police shad surrounded the high school in the eastern German city after the attacker barricaded himself in a classroom with other students.
Reports of the incident through-out the day were confused and police had earlier spoken of two gunmen. German media quoted one witness as saying the killer had opened fire after sitting down to begin a mathematics exam.
"The perpetrator was a former pupil at the school who had been expelled. We can give no more details at the moment," Erfurt police chief Manfred Grube told a news conference.
"He took his own life, apparently when he saw that there was no way out for him," Grube said.
A radio reporter near the school talked of an attacker wearing a mask. A paper note with the word "Help" hung from a window and a woman peered out nervously.
"I talked to a 10-year-old pupil who said `The gunmen were shooting wildly around us and there was blood everywhere,'" the reporter said.
About 700 students between the ages of 10 and 19 attend the Gutenberg secondary school in Erfurt.
Early reports said some survivors of the massacre had been wounded. Several teenage students were being treated for shock in local hospitals, medical officials said.
Police officers wearing bulletproof vests crouched behind parked cars around the school during the standoff.
Hundreds of armed police surrounded the building. Police set up a tent nearby where parents were informed of the whereabouts of their children.
The shooting coincided with a debate in the German parliament yesterday on tightening gun control legislation.
Germany already has strict laws governing the right to own a gun but experts say the country is awash with illegal weapons smuggled into the country from eastern Europe and the Balkans.
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