At least 10 people killed in Austria school attack

London – At least ten people have been killed, including students, when a shooter opened fire at a high school in the Austrian city of Graz, on Tuesday (10^th June), officials said.

The victims included children between 14 and 18 years old. The perpetrator, said to be a student, is also dead and the school has been secured, authorities said.

Officers first responded to the reports of gunshots at the Bundesoberstufenrealgymnasium Dreierschützengasse school in the northwest of the city at around 10 a.m. local time.

Austria’s Chancellor Christian Stocker expressed horror at the shooting, writing on X: “The rampage at a school in Graz is a national tragedy that has deeply shaken our entire country. This inconceivable act suddenly tore young people from the life they still had ahead of them. There are no words for the pain and grief,” he added.

Ursula von der Leyen, the President of the European Commission, said: “It is difficult to bear when schools become places of death and violence.”

Gun violence is rare in Austria, along with most central European countries. The country’s rate of firearm homicides was just 0.1 per 100,000 people in 2021, according to the Institute for Health Metrics and Evaluation, compared to 4.5 per 100,000 people in the United States.

But Austria’s gun ownership is higher than most European Union countries; there are 30 civilian firearms owned for every 100 citizens, according to the Small Arms Survey, a research institute based in Switzerland.