Six people were killed when a gunman opened fire at a university in the Russian city of Perm, leaving more than two dozen wounded in an incident that is becoming less of a rarity in a country with strict regulations over gun ownership.
Russia’s Investigative Committee said that it had detained the shooter shortly after the attack on Monday morning at Perm State University, located around 870 miles east of Moscow. The gunman was a student and was injured during the encounter, said the agency, which handles probes into major crimes.
A murder investigation has been opened into the shooting, which injured at least 28 people, authorities said. The Investigative Committee initially said eight people were killed, but later revised this number. No information was released about a possible motive.
Officials at the university didn’t answer the phone.
According to information posted on the university’s social-media page, the attack began around 11 a.m. local time when the gunman entered the campus and began to shoot. Students and staff locked themselves in rooms and the university urged those who could leave the campus to do so, officials said.
Investigators said the gunman used a hunting rifle, which he acquired in May.
Videos posted on local news websites and social media showed students jumping out of the windows of a university building.
A total of 3,000 students were at university premises during the shooting, according to the school, which was founded in 1916.
The killings in Perm come months after a school shooting in the eastern city of Kazan left nine dead, including children. More than 20 people were wounded in that May incident, for which a 19-year-old man was arrested.
In the aftermath of that attack, Russian President Vladimir Putin and other officials called for tougher gun-control laws. In July, Mr. Putin signed a new law regulating gun ownership.
School mass shootings have been relatively rare in Russia due to usually tight security on campuses.
In 2004, a group of heavily armed militants took more than 1,000 people hostage at a primary school in the southern town of Beslan. More than 330 people, over half of them children, died. Twenty-one people were killed and scores injured in 2018 at a college in the Crimean city of Kerch when an 18-year-old student opened fire and then killed himself.
Kremlin spokesman Dmitry Peskov said that Mr. Putin extended his deep condolences to the friends and families of the victims of Monday’s attack. Authorities have promised to offer support to the victims and their relatives.
This story has been published from a wire agency feed without modifications to the text
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