Gunman kills 9 in a mass shooting at a school in Austria

BERLIN — A gunman killed nine people Tuesday morning after opening fire at a school in the southern Austrian city of Graz. Police say the shooter is also dead, in what they believe was a suicide.

Police first responded to reports of gunfire at 10 a.m. local time at the Bundesoberstufenrealgymnasium Dreierschützengasse, a secondary school in the northwest of the city. They later found that the gunman had shot and killed nine people and injured 12 others.

Among the dead were six female and three male victims, police said, but they did not specify the ages of the dead or how many were students or teachers.

Minutes after the shooting started, police arrived and evacuated the school. In all, 300 police officers were at the scene as well as 160 paramedics.

Police say they later found the suspected shooter, a 21-year-old man who was a former student at the school, dead from an apparent self-inflicted gun wound in a school restroom. They say the shooter acted alone and that he brought two guns with him to the school — a rifle and a handgun.

They did not release the suspect’s name or any other details about him, only saying that he was not known to police and that he possessed a license for the guns.

“There are no words to describe the pain, the disbelief and the grief that all of Austria feels right now,” said Austrian Chancellor Christian Stocker at an afternoon press conference in Graz. “Our country has fallen silent in horror.”

Stocker called for three days of national mourning in a country where mass shootings are exceedingly rare.

Austria, with a population of 9 million, has one of the most heavily armed civilian populations in Europe, with an estimated 30 firearms per 100 people. Machine guns and pump action guns are banned, but the ownership of revolvers, pistols and even semi-automatic weapons is allowed as long as applicants go through a permitting and licensing process.