A gun attack at a university in Prague, Czech Republic, that left at least fifteen people dead on Thursday has few precedents in Europe.

AFP presents the main cases of non-terrorist armed attacks on schools over the past 25 years.

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On May 3 of this year, eight students and a caretaker of a school in the center of Belgrade were fatally shot by a 13-year-old student. Six children and a teacher were also injured.

The intruder, who called the police himself after the incident, was detained in the yard and hospitalized. His father, a doctor and gun owner, took him to the shooting range several times. According to the police, the teenager “planned the attack for a month”, making “a list of children he intended to kill”.

RUSSIA – 3 cases

On September 20, 2021, at the University of Perm (central Russia), an 18-year-old student dressed in black and wearing a helmet shot and killed six people – four women and one man aged 18 to 26 and a 66-year-old former teacher – and injured 24 others. . He was wounded by the police and detained.

A few months earlier, on May 11, 2021, seven children and two teachers were killed in a shooting at a school in Kazan, the capital of central Tatarstan. More than twenty people were also injured.

Armed with a legally obtained rifle, 19-year-old former school student Ilnaz Galyayev detonated the improvised device before opening fire in a class of fourth-graders.

20 minutes before the attack, he announced his intention on the Telegram messaging system. In April 2023, he was sentenced to life imprisonment.

On October 17, 2018, 18-year-old student Vladyslav Roslyakov opened fire at the technical school where he studied in Kerch, Crimea (a Ukrainian peninsula annexed by Russia in 2014), killing twenty people (including nine minors). ) and wounded about forty before taking his own life.

The attacker, who legally obtained a gun permit and passed all psychological tests, also detonated an improvised explosive device at the school.

GERMANY – 2 cases

On March 11, 2009, 17-year-old Tim Kretschmer went on a rampage at his former school in Winnenden, near Stuttgart (southwest). He killed fifteen people – nine students, three teachers and three bystanders – before taking his own life.

On April 26, 2002, sixteen people, including twelve teachers, a secretary, two students, and a policeman, were shot dead at a high school in Erfurt (East) by a 19-year-old maniac who then committed suicide.

FINLAND – 2 cases

On September 23, 2008, a 22-year-old student killed nine students in his class and a teacher at a vocational school in Cauhayoka, a small town in the southwest of the country, before taking his own life. The day before, he was called to the police for posting a video of himself firing an automatic pistol on YouTube.

On November 7, 2007, an 18-year-old shot dead eight people, including a school principal and a high school nurse, in Jokel, north of Helsinki, before taking his own life.

Read also:

• Who is the young man who committed the massacre in Prague? His father was found dead
• How the armed attack unfolded step by step in Prague