PRAGUE: A gunman killed as a minimum 15 humans and wounded at the least 24 others at a Prague university on Thursday earlier than he became “eliminated”, in line with police and Prague emergency services, marking the USA’s worst-ever mass shooting.
Czech police responded to the taking pictures at Charles college’s school of arts building in Jan Palach rectangular rapidly after three pm (1400 GMT). Police stated the father of the shooter – a student on the school – became determined dead in advance on Thursday.
“We continually notion that this become a aspect that did no longer problem us. Now it turns out that, regrettably, our global is also changing and the trouble of the person shooter is rising right here as nicely,” Prague Mayor Bohuslav Svoboda advised Czech television.
Petr Nedoma, director of the Rudolfinum Gallery at a concert hall across Palach rectangular, instructed Czech television he saw the shooter.
“I noticed a younger individual at the gallery who had a few weapon in his hand, like and automatic weapon, and capturing closer to the Manes Bridge. again and again, with a few interruptions, then I saw as he shot, put hands up and threw the weapon down on the road, it lay there at the pedestrian crossing,” he stated.
Police sealed off the square and the area adjoining to the constructing, located in a busy part of town with a famous street leading vacationers to vintage metropolis square.
Czech television live broadcast showed several ambulances and police cars with flashing lighting fixtures coated up along the building followed by way of the sound of sirens.
One witness instructed information internet site iDnes.cz that they got off at the tram stop via the college and “abruptly I heard capturing”.
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Klara, a student, informed the information internet site she was among folks that police evacuated from the building.
“It changed into extraordinarily horrifying, there were quite a few policemen everywhere, who were shouting at us with submachine weapons, telling us to run out of doors,” she stated.
An e mail despatched to team of workers and college students had stated the shooter was in one of the buildings.
“do not move anywhere, in case you’re within the places of work, lock them and vicinity fixtures in front of the door, flip off the lighting,” the e-mail stated.
One X user published a photograph of a collection of college students, hiding crouched on a ledge of the building.
top Minister Petr Fiala cancelled his trip to the east of the united states and turned into en course to Prague, he said on X.
Gun crime is incredibly rare inside the Czech Republic. In December 2019, a forty two-yr-vintage gunman killed six humans at a sanatorium waiting room in the jap Czech city of Ostrava before fleeing and fatally shooting himself, police said.
In 2015, a person fatally shot eight people after which killed himself at a restaurant in Uhersky Brod.