14 shot dead at Prague university

A 24-year-old student killed more than 14 people and wounded dozens more at a Prague university on Thursday in the Czech Republic’s worst shooting in decades, before authorities said the attacker was “eliminated”.
The deadly violence in the city’s historic centre sparked evacuations, a massive response by heavily armed police and warnings for people to stay indoors.
The shooting erupted at the Charles University’s Faculty of Arts, which sits near major tourist sites like the 14th-century Charles Bridge.
Police sealed off the square and the area adjacent to the building, located in a busy part of town down the hill from Prague Castle on a popular street leading tourists to Old Town Square.
Media images showed students evacuating the building with their hands up in the air and others perched on a ledge near the roof trying to hide from the attacker.
“More than 14 people have lost their lives and at least 25 have been wounded,” police chief Martin Vondrasek told reporters following the shooting.
Emergency services reported nine serious injuries, at least five mid-serious, and up to 11 light injuries.
Vondrasek said police started a search for the man before the mass shooting as his father had been found dead in the village of Hostoun west of Prague.
The gunman “left for Prague saying he wanted to kill himself”, Vondrasek said. Police suggested earlier the gunman had killed his father.
Police searched the main Faculty of Arts building where the gunman was expected to show up for a lecture, but he went to the faculty’s other building nearby.
“At 1359 GMT, we received the first information about shooting,” Vondrasek told reporters, adding the rapid response unit was on the scene within 12 minutes.
“At 1420 GMT, the officers in action told us about the gunman’s motionless body,” Vondrasek said, adding that unconfirmed information showed he had committed suicide.
Citing a probe into social media, Vondrasek said the gunman was inspired by a “similar case that happened in Russia this autumn”, without going into details.
“At the moment, there is nothing to suggest any further imminent danger,” he added.
Vondrasek said no police officer was wounded in on Thursday’s action and that police had not yet started to identify the dead by 1700 GMT as pyrotechnicians were at work in the building.
Police evacuated the building, using a concert hall across the street as a temporary refuge for the evacuees.
Petr Nedoma, director of the Rudolfinum Gallery at the concert hall, told Czech TV he saw the shooter.
“I saw a young person on the gallery who had some weapon in his hand, like and automatic weapon, and shooting toward the Manes Bridge,” he said. “Then I saw as he shot, put hands up and threw the weapon down on the street, it lay there on the pedestrian crossing.”
Another witness, Ivo Havranek, 43, told Reuters via Zoom that he initially thought the “couple of bangs” he heard might have come from loud tourists or a nearby movie set.
“Then suddenly there were students and teachers running out of the building. I went through the crowd not realising what is actually going on. I wasn’t ready to admit that something like that could happen in Prague,” he said.
Only once he saw police officers with automatic rifles, he knew it was serious, he said. “They shouted at me to run.”
Czech President Petr Pavel said he was “shocked” by the violence and expressed “deep regret and sincere condolences to the families and relatives of the victims”.
Prime Minister Petr Fiala said the “lone gunman ... wasted many lives of mostly young people”.
“There is no justification for this horrendous act,” he added.
The worst shooting since the Czech Republic emerged as an independent state in 1993 also prompted messages of support from across the world.
US President Joe Biden sent his condolences, slamming the “senseless” shooting.
“The president and the first lady are praying for the families who lost loved ones and everyone else who has been affected by the senseless act of violence,” White House Press Secretary Karine Jean-Pierre told reporters.
French President Emmanuel Macron also expressed his “solidarity” with the Czech people, as did many other European leaders including European Commission president Ursula von der Leyen and Ukraine President Volodymyr Zelensky.
Czech Interior Minister Vit Rakusan said that there was no link between the shooting and “international terrorism”.
He added that “no other gunman has been confirmed” and called on people to follow police instructions.
Police cordoned off the area and asked people living nearby to stay at home.
Prague’s emergency service said on X that “a large number of ambulance units” were deployed at the faculty.
Though mass gun violence is unusual in the Czech Republic, the nation has been rocked by some instances in recent years.
A 63-year-old male shot seven men and a woman dead in 2015 before killing himself 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, with another woman dying days later. The man shot himself dead about three hours after the attack.