The Czech Republic declared today a national day of mourning after the worst shooting in the country’s history left at least 15 people dead at Prague’s Charles University.
Officials said there was no evidence that the shooter, a 24-year-old student who also died during the rampage, had links to international terrorism. The carnage in the heart of Prague’s historic center on Thursday lasted about 20 minutes and left the country of 11 million shaken.
“We are all shocked by this horrific act,” Czech Prime Minister Petr Fiala said after an emergency meeting of his cabinet. “It’s hard to find words to express condemnation but also pain and grief that the entire society is feeling.”
Photo: Reuters
Church bells are to ring across the country today at noon to honor the victims.
Leaders across the nation’s political spectrum and worldwide offered their condolences. German Chancellor Olaf Scholz said he was “deeply shocked” by the attack.
The White House said US President Joe Biden was “praying for the families who lost loved ones and everyone else who has been affected by the senseless act of violence.”
Several guns and a large amount of ammunition were found in the building hosting the Faculty of Arts, and only a quick police reaction prevented dozens more fatalities, Czech Minister of the Interior Vit Rakusan said.
The shooter legally owned several weapons, police chief Martin Vondrasek said.
Earlier in the day, authorities found the killer’s father dead in a village near Prague. They also got information that he had left for the capital intending to kill himself, Vondrasek said.
The assailant either killed himself or died when police returned fire, he said.
The police are investigating a possibility that he was also involved in an unrelated double murder outside Prague last week.
Czech Minister of Education, Youth and Sport Mikulas Bek, who studied at the faculty, placed a candle at Charles University’s main building in sympathy for the victims.
Czech officials did not immediately suggest a motive for the shooting — a rare event in a country that limits access to firearms by requiring gun owners to pass written and practical tests as well as psychological screenings.
“It’s an unimaginable tragedy,” Rakusan said. “The atmosphere of pre-Christmas Czech Republic has been changed, by an act of one insane shooter, into something unrecognizable.”
Students locked themselves in classrooms or ran out of the building with their hands over their heads after shots rang out, Czech television reported. TV footage showed people trying to hide by standing on the ledge of the building. Some found shelter in the nearby seat of the Prague Philharmonic. Overall, 25 people were wounded, including 10 seriously.
Dozens of police cars and police officers, including some with machine guns, cordoned off an area around the scene, which is in the heart of Prague’s famed center.
The university department where the shooting occurred is in a limestone building on Jan Palach Square, with a view of the Prague Castle across the Vltava River.
A fire caused by a burst gas pipe yesterday spread to several homes and sent a fireball soaring into the sky outside Malaysia’s largest city, injuring more than 100 people. The towering inferno near a gas station in Putra Heights outside Kuala Lumpur was visible for kilometers and lasted for several hours. It happened during a public holiday as Muslims, who are the majority in Malaysia, celebrate the second day of Eid al-Fitr. National oil company Petronas said the fire started at one of its gas pipelines at 8:10am and the affected pipeline was later isolated. Disaster management officials said shutting the
US Vice President J.D. Vance on Friday accused Denmark of not having done enough to protect Greenland, when he visited the strategically placed and resource-rich Danish territory coveted by US President Donald Trump. Vance made his comment during a trip to the Pituffik Space Base in northwestern Greenland, a visit viewed by Copenhagen and Nuuk as a provocation. “Our message to Denmark is very simple: You have not done a good job by the people of Greenland,” Vance told a news conference. “You have under-invested in the people of Greenland, and you have under-invested in the security architecture of this
UNREST: The authorities in Turkey arrested 13 Turkish journalists in five days, deported a BBC correspondent and on Thursday arrested a reporter from Sweden Waving flags and chanting slogans, many hundreds of thousands of anti-government demonstrators on Saturday rallied in Istanbul, Turkey, in defence of democracy after the arrest of Istanbul Mayor Ekrem Imamoglu which sparked Turkey’s worst street unrest in more than a decade. Under a cloudless blue sky, vast crowds gathered in Maltepe on the Asian side of Turkey’s biggest city on the eve of the Eid al-Fitr celebration which started yesterday, marking the end of Ramadan. Ozgur Ozel, chairman of the main opposition Republican People’s Party (CHP), which organized the rally, said there were 2.2 million people in the crowd, but
JOINT EFFORTS: The three countries have been strengthening an alliance and pressing efforts to bolster deterrence against Beijing’s assertiveness in the South China Sea The US, Japan and the Philippines on Friday staged joint naval drills to boost crisis readiness off a disputed South China Sea shoal as a Chinese military ship kept watch from a distance. The Chinese frigate attempted to get closer to the waters, where the warships and aircraft from the three allied countries were undertaking maneuvers off the Scarborough Shoal — also known as Huangyan Island (黃岩島) and claimed by Taiwan and China — in an unsettling moment but it was warned by a Philippine frigate by radio and kept away. “There was a time when they attempted to maneuver
RSS