A teenage student armed with two handguns and a knife opened fire in a vocational training college in Athens yesterday, wounding three people before shooting himself in the head, Greek authorities said.
The 19-year-old gunman died of his injuries after being taken to a hospital. He left a note accusing his fellow students of picking on him.
“He succumbed during the operation to save him,” senior Health Ministry official Panayiotis Efstathiou said.
PHOTO: EPA
Police said an 18-year-old student at a state college in western Athens was seriously injured and two men outside the college building were shot and lightly injured. All three were hospitalized.
Although there have been cases of stabbings at Greek schools, the shooting is unprecedented.
Police identified the gunman as an immigrant from the Georgian breakaway region of Abkhazia.
“He left a note saying he couldn’t take it any more,” police spokesman Panayiotis Stathis said. “It seems his motive was revenge.”
Stathis said the gunman shot his fellow student four times.
“He may have believed [the victim] was most strongly involved in the activities against him.”
He said the shooter was armed with two handguns, and a knife was found in his bag.
Police say the gunman arrived around 8:45am, a quarter of an hour after lessons had started, and shot the student victim in the courtyard before running out.
He then shot two workers at a nearby shop who tried to stop him, one in the leg and the other in the arm. Then he went to a park close to the school and shot himself in the head.
Efstathiou, the Health Ministry official, said the student who was shot by the gunman was in serious condition with gunshot wounds in the chest, arms and legs, while the other two men had lighter injuries.
The shooting comes amid a recent surge of bloody bank robberies, homicides, muggings and violent burglaries in Greece. The country has no history of violent crime, and the incidents have embarrassed Greece’s conservative government, which has been shaken by a series of financial scandals and holds a slim one-seat majority in parliament.
TURNAROUND: The Liberal Party had trailed the Conservatives by a wide margin, but that was before Trump threatened to make Canada the US’ 51st state Canada’s ruling Liberals, who a few weeks ago looked certain to lose an election this year, are mounting a major comeback amid the threat of US tariffs and are tied with their rival Conservatives, according to three new polls. An Ipsos survey released late on Tuesday showed that the left-leaning Liberals have 38 percent public support and the official opposition center-right Conservatives have 36 percent. The Liberals have overturned a 26-point deficit in six weeks, and run advertisements comparing the Conservative leader to Trump. The Conservative strategy had long been to attack unpopular Canadian Prime Minister Justin Trudeau, but last month he
OPTIMISTIC: A Philippine Air Force spokeswoman said the military believed the crew were safe and were hopeful that they and the jet would be recovered A Philippine Air Force FA-50 jet and its two-person crew are missing after flying in support of ground forces fighting communist rebels in the southern Mindanao region, a military official said yesterday. Philippine Air Force spokeswoman Colonel Consuelo Castillo said the jet was flying “over land” on the way to its target area when it went missing during a “tactical night operation in support of our ground troops.” While she declined to provide mission specifics, Philippine Army spokesman Colonel Louie Dema-ala confirmed that the missing FA-50 was part of a squadron sent “to provide air support” to troops fighting communist rebels in
PROBE: Last week, Romanian prosecutors launched a criminal investigation against presidential candidate Calin Georgescu accusing him of supporting fascist groups Tens of thousands of protesters gathered in Romania’s capital on Saturday in the latest anti-government demonstration by far-right groups after a top court canceled a presidential election in the EU country last year. Protesters converged in front of the government building in Bucharest, waving Romania’s tricolor flags and chanting slogans such as “down with the government” and “thieves.” Many expressed support for Calin Georgescu, who emerged as the frontrunner in December’s canceled election, and demanded they be resumed from the second round. George Simion, the leader of the far-right Alliance for the Unity of Romanians (AUR), which organized the protest,
ECONOMIC DISTORTION? The US commerce secretary’s remarks echoed Elon Musk’s arguments that spending by the government does not create value for the economy US Secretary of Commerce Howard Lutnick on Sunday said that government spending could be separated from GDP reports, in response to questions about whether the spending cuts pushed by Elon Musk’s Department of Government Efficiency could possibly cause an economic downturn. “You know that governments historically have messed with GDP,” Lutnick said on Fox News Channel’s Sunday Morning Futures. “They count government spending as part of GDP. So I’m going to separate those two and make it transparent.” Doing so could potentially complicate or distort a fundamental measure of the US economy’s health. Government spending is traditionally included in the GDP because
RSS