At least 10 people were killed in a shooting at a school in the Austrian city of Graz on Tuesday, Austrian police said. Police said they believe the suspected perpetrator, who also died, acted alone.
Mayor Elke Kahr described the events as a terrible tragedy", theAustriaPress Agency reported. Kahr said that many people were taken to hospitals with injuries.
Police said they believe the assailant acted alone.
Special forces were among those sent to the BORG Dreierschtzengasse high school, about a kilometre (over half a mile) from Graz's historic centre, after a call at 10am local time. At 11.30am, police wrote on social network X that the school had been evacuated and everyone had been taken to a safe meeting point. They wrote that the situation was secured and there is no longer believed to be any danger.
Police deployed in large numbers, with police and other emergency vehicles guarding the area around the school and with at least one police helicopter flying above the area, according to photos published by the regional newspaper Kleine Zeitung.
The Salzburger Nachrichten newspaper cited unconfirmed reports as saying the suspect was a 22-year-old former student who carried twoweaponsa pistol and a shotgun.
Graz, Austria's second-biggest city, is located in the southeast of the country and has about 300,000 inhabitants.
Austrian Chancellor Christian Stocker said the shooting is a national tragedy that deeply shocks our whole country".
There are no words for the pain and grief that all of us the whole of Austria feel now, he wrote in a statement posted on X.
President Alexander Van der Bellen said that this horror cannot be captured in words".
These were young people who had their whole lives ahead of them. A teacher who accompanied them on their way, he said.
'Every child should feel safe at school'
EU top diplomatKaja Kallassaid she was "deeply shocked" by theschool shooting.
"Every child should feel safe at school and be able to learn free from fear and violence," Kallas posted on X. "My thoughts are with the victims, their families and the Austrian people in this dark moment."
"It's incomprehensible and unbearable. My sympathy and grief go out to the victims and their families. No one can imagine the suffering; as a mother of three children, it breaks my heart," Austria's Minister for European and International Affairs Beate Meinl-Reisinger wrote on X.
Austria has one of the most heavily armed civilian populations in Europe, with an estimated 30 firearms per 100 persons, according to the Small Arms Survey, an independent research project.
Machine guns and pump action guns are banned, while revolvers, pistols and semi-automatic weapons are allowed only with official authorisation. Rifles and shotguns are permitted with a firearms license or a valid hunting licence, or for members of traditional shooting clubs.
Attacks in public are rare in the Alpine nation of almost 9.2 million people. It ranks among the ten safest countries in the world, according to the Global Peace Index.
In January 2025, an 18-year-old man fatally stabbed a high school student and a teacher at a school in northeastern Slovakia.
In December 2024, a 19-year-old man stabbed a seven-year-old student to death and injured several others at a primary school in Zagreb, Croatia.
In December 2023, an attack by a student at a university in central Prague left 14 people dead and 25 injured.
A few months earlier that year, a 13-year-old gunned down eight fellow classmates and a security guard at an elementary school in downtown Belgrade. Six children and a teacher were also injured. The shooter contacted the police, who arrested him.
In 2009, nine pupils, three teachers and three passers-by were killed in a school shooting at Winnenden in southern Germany by a former pupil who then killed himself.
(FRANCE 24 with AFP, AP and Reuters)
Originally published on France24
