Czech Republic in mourning after Prague shooting

(Prague) The Czech Republic was in mourning on Friday the day after the worst shooting in the country’s modern history which caused the death of 13 people at a university in Prague.

A 24-year-old student shot dead 13 people and injured 25 others at Charles University’s Faculty of Arts. The attacker died during an exchange of fire with security forces.

Police identified 13 dead and were continuing to search the scene, Interior Minister Vit Rakusan said on radio on Friday.

“We know the identities of the 14 dead. These are 13 victims of the mad gunman and himself,” Interior Minister Vit Rakusan told Czech public television, while police said the gunman had committed suicide.

Mr. Rakusan said three of the injured were foreigners.

The head of Dutch diplomacy indicated earlier that one of the injured was a national of his country.

All of the victims were killed inside the building, and some of them were college classmates of the murderer.

While declaring that there was no longer any danger, the police decided to continue monitoring several vulnerable locations on Friday, including schools.

Police chief Martin Vondrasek said earlier that the shooter, unknown to the authorities, had a “huge arsenal of weapons and ammunition” and that rapid police action had prevented further carnage. severe.

The government declared a day of national mourning on December 23 and the population was invited to observe a minute of silence at midday.

Vondrasek said police began searching for the student even before the shooting because his father was found dead in the village of Hostoun, west of Prague.

The gunman “left for Prague saying he wanted to kill himself,” he said, declining to confirm whether the gunman had actually killed his father.

Police searched a building at the Faculty of Arts where the shooter was supposed to report for a class, but he eventually went to the faculty’s main building, located nearby.

The faculty is located in the historic center of Prague, close to major tourist sites such as the 14th century Charles Bridge.^e century and the picturesque old town square.

Another murder

Police learned of the shooting around 9 a.m. ET and immediately dispatched a response unit.

Twenty minutes later, the shooter was found dead.

Citing a social media investigation, Vondrasek said the shooter was inspired by a “similar case in Russia,” without going into detail.

Vondrasek said police suspected the same gunman of killing a young man and his two-month-old daughter in a pram during a walk in a forest in Prague’s eastern suburbs on December 15.

The investigation into this murder remained at an impasse until evidence found in Hostoun linked the shooter to this crime.

Support from local and international politicians poured in after the attack.

“Nothing can justify this horrible act,” said Czech Prime Minister Petr Fiala, expressing his condolences to the bereaved families.

A senseless act

The President of the United States, Joe Biden, offered his condolences, denouncing a “senseless” shooting.

French President Emmanuel Macron, EU chief Ursula von der Leyen and Ukrainian President Volodymyr Zelensky offered their condolences.

According to Mr. Rakusan, there was no link between the shooting and “international terrorism” and the student acted alone.

In 2015, a 63-year-old man shot dead seven men and a woman before committing suicide in a restaurant in the southeastern town of Uhersky Brod. In 2019, a man killed six people in the waiting room of a hospital in the eastern city of Ostrava, and another woman died a few days later. The murderer then committed suicide.