Prague student kills 14 in gun attack

A student at Charles University in Prague shot and killed 14 people and injured 24 others, nine of them seriously, yesterday before being found dead, in what is believed to be the worst mass shooting in the Czech Republic's modern history.

- Jon Henley, Ladka Bauerova, Ashifa Kassam & Robert Tait

The city's police chief, Martin Vondrášek, told a press briefing yesterday evening that the death toll could rise further, adding that the shootings had been "a premeditated violent attack", apparently inspired by similar massacres abroad.

The Czech interior minister, Vít Rakušan, said there was no indication the killings, at the university's faculty of arts building, had "any connection with international terrorism". The father of the shooter had been found dead earlier yesterday, police said.

Fourteen killed and dozens hurt in Prague after student opens fire at university

"We always thought this was a thing that did not concern us. Now it turns out that, unfortunately, our world is also changing, and the problem of the individual shooter is emerging here as well," Prague's mayor, Bohuslav Svoboda, told Czech TV.

Police said shortly after 3pm local time (1400 GMT) that they were responding to a shooting at Jan Palach Square, near major tourist sites such as the 14th-century Charles Bridge in central Prague. Less than an hour later they said on X that the shooter had been "eliminated" and the entire building was being evacuated.

Teachers and students were instructed by email to take shelter as the police action was under way. "Stay put, don't go anywhere. If you're in the offices, lock them and place furniture in front of the door, turn off the lights," the email said.

Several students posted pictures of doors inside the university barricaded shut. One of them, Jakob Weizman, told the Guardian he had first heard the gunshots while taking an exam. "He [the gunman] was going through each classroom to see if people were there to shoot them. We locked our door just 5 minutes before he tried to open our door."