At least six people were killed and 20 injured, including children, in a shooting at a school in Izhevsk, central Russia, the Russian Interior Ministry said on Monday. assailant committed suicide.
“At this stage, we are aware of 6 dead and 20 injured,” the ministry said on its Telegram channel.
“Police have found the body of the man who opened fire. According to our information, he committed suicide,” he added.
“There are victims among the children and the injured,” said the governor of the region, Alexander Bretchalov, visibly moved, in a video posted on Telegram a little earlier.
He was speaking outside School No. 88 in Izhevsk. Behind him, medical personnel could be seen running into the building.
According to him, “an unidentified person entered the school” before “killing the guard” and opening fire inside the school, especially on the children.
“The evacuation is complete” and “the entire perimeter is cordoned off”, added Mr. Bretchalov in his video, specifying that the Russian National Guard, the security services of the FSB and “the authorities in charge of the investigation were already there.
Earlier in the morning, the Russian Interior Ministry said that “the police (had) received a message about a shooting at school No. 88 in Izhevsk”.
“The police immediately went to the scene,” added this source.
Izhevsk, a city of nearly 650,000 inhabitants, is the capital of the Republic of Udmurtia in the center of the country, just west of the Ural mountains which mark the separation between European Russia and Asian Russia.
Once extremely rare, fatal shootings, especially in schools, have tended to become more numerous in Russia in recent years, to the point that President Vladimir Putin has become alarmed, seeing it as a phenomenon imported from the United States and a perverse effect. of globalization.