Flags on public buildings flew at half mast Saturday and masses were scheduled across the Czech Republic for a day of national mourning after a deadly shooting at Prague’s Charles University — the worst in the country in decades.
A 24-year-old student opened fire at the Faculty of Arts on Thursday, killing 13 people and then himself. Another person died in hospital later on. The gunfire sparked frantic scenes of students running from the attack. The government asked Czechs to observe a minute’s silence at noon (1100 GMT) on Saturday and bells were due to ring on churches across the EU and NATO member country.
“It is hard to find the words to express condemnation on the one hand and, on the other, the pain and sorrow that our entire society is feeling in these days before Christmas,” said Prime Minister Petr Fiala. Tearful students have lit thousands of candles at makeshift memorials at the Faculty of Arts and the university headquarters near by.
The school, families and friends have also started to publish the names of the victims, students and teachers alike. “This is extremely cruel news for us all,” the Institute of Musicology said on Facebook after learning its 49-year-old director Lenka Hlavkova, a mother of two, was among the victims.
Other victims included Finnish literature expert Jan Dlask and student Lucie Spindlerova. The gunman also wounded 25 people including three who were hit by bullets in the street as he fired from a balcony. A Dutch national and two citizens of the United Arab Emirates were among the wounded. Interior Minister Vit Rakusan said there was no link between the shooting and “international terrorism” and that the perpetrator acted on his own.
– ‘Huge arsenal’ –
But police have since detained four people either for threatening to copy the attack or for approving it. Police guards at selected sites, including schools, will be in place at least until January 1, said Interior Minister Rakusan. Police chief Martin Vondrasek said the gunman, previously unknown to the police, had a “huge arsenal of weapons and ammunition”.
He added that inspecting the crime scene was “the most shattering experience” in his 31 years of police service. Police started a search for the student when they found his murdered father earlier on Thursday. The student also told his friend he was planning to kill himself in Prague.
Police searched a Faculty of Arts building where he was expected to attend a lecture, but he went instead to the faculty’s main building nearby. Police learned about the shooting at around 1400 GMT and sent a rapid response unit to the scene. Twenty minutes later, the gunman was dead. Vondrasek said the gunman was inspired by a similar shooting in Russia, citing his social media account.
– ‘It could have been me’ –
Following a search at the gunman’s home, police drew a link between him and the yet unresolved murder of a young man and his two-month-old daughter in a Prague forest on December 15. “A ballistic analysis proved the gun used in the… forest was IDENTICAL with a gun found at the university gunman’s home,” police said on X.
This week’s shooting in Prague’s UNESCO-listed historic centre was the deadliest since the Czech Republic emerged as an independent state in 1993. Sympathy poured in from across the world with Pope Francis, US President Joe Biden, French President Emmanuel Macron, Ukraine’s President Volodymyr Zelensky, Britain’s King Charles and many others sending their condolences.
At the makeshift memorial, technical university student Antonin Volavka lit a candle to pay tribute to the dead. “This could have happened to anyone. Really, it could have been me,” he told AFP. The Czech Republic is the world’s 12th safest country, according to the 2023 Global Peace Index, and mass gun violence is rare.
But in 2015, a man shot seven men and a woman dead before killing himself in a restaurant in the southeast, while another gunman killed seven people in an eastern hospital and then himself in 2019.
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