At least 10 dead in Austrian school shooting

At least 10 people have been killed and many others were injured in a shooting at a school in the Austrian city of Graz.

The suspected perpetrator also died, the city’s mayor said.

Special forces were among those sent to the BORG Dreierschutzengasse high school, just under a mile from Graz’s historic centre, after a call at 10am local time (9am BST).

At 11.30am (10.30am BST), police wrote on social network X that the school had been evacuated and everyone had been taken to a safe meeting point.

Authorities say the assailant was a 21-year-old Austrian man who had two weapons, which he appeared to have owned legally.

Police said they did not immediately have information on the man’s motive, but said that he killed himself in a toilet after fatally shooting nine people.

Austrian interior minister Gerhard Karner said at a press conference in Graz that the gunman was a former student at the school who did not finish his studies.

Austrian Chancellor Christian Stocker said there would be three days of national mourning, with the Austrian flag lowered to half-staff and a national minute of mourning at 10am on Wednesday (9am BST).

He said that it was “a dark day in the history of our country”.

Police deployed in large numbers, with police and other emergency vehicles guarding the area around the school and with at least one police helicopter flying above the area, according to photos published by the regional newspaper Kleine Zeitung.

Graz, Austria’s second-biggest city, is located in the south-east of the country and has about 300,000 inhabitants.

Austrian Chancellor Christian Stocker, who is going to Graz, said the shooting “is a national tragedy that deeply shocks our whole country”.

“There are no words for the pain and grief that all of us — the whole of Austria — feel now,” he wrote in a statement posted on X.

President Alexander Van der Bellen said that “this horror cannot be captured in words”.

“These were young people who had their whole lives ahead of them. A teacher who accompanied them on their way,” he said.

European Commission President Ursula von der Leyen wrote on X: “Schools are symbols for youth, hope and the future.

“It is hard to bear when schools become places of death and violence.”