11 children are among the 17 fatalities in a school shooting in the Russian city of Izhevsk.
Among the dead were a school security guard and two schoolteachers. 24 other people were injured in the attack.
The gunman, clad in black pants, a jacket, swastika T-shirt, and a black balaclava, shot the school security guard before walking into the school and opening fire on children, many of whom were as young as 7 years old, according to local media accounts.
He killed himself after the attack.
Russia’s Investigative Committee identified the gunman as 34-year-old Artyom Kazantsev, a graduate of the same school, and said he was wearing a black T-shirt bearing “Nazi symbols”.
The head of the Udmurt Republic, Alexander Brechalov told reporters that Kazantsev was registered with a psycho-neurological clinic.
Russian President Vladimir Putin on Monday denounced the Izhevsk attack as “inhuman”.
“President Putin deeply mourns the deaths of people, children, at a school where there was a terrorist attack by a person, who apparently belongs to a neo-fascist group,” Kremlin spokesman Dmitry Peskov told reporters.
“The president wishes for the recovery of those injured as a result of this inhuman terrorist attack,” Peskov added.
A criminal investigation into the incident has been launched on charges of multiple murders and illegal possession of firearms.
School shootings in Russia are relatively rare in comparison with the United States but may be becoming more common, with three mass shootings at educational institutions since May last year.
Just over a year ago, an 18-year-old university student, Timur Bekmansurov, killed six people and wounded 47 at Perm State University.
In May last year, Ilnaz Galyaviev, 21, killed nine people at a school in Kazan, Tatarstan, including seven children.
In 2018, a fourth-year student at Kerch Polytechnic College, Vladimir Roslyakov, killed 21 people and injured 67 in Russia’s worst school shooting.
