Prague’s emergency response service stated on X that round 25 folks had been injured, 11 of them significantly. The shooter was a pupil on the college, police stated at a information convention, in keeping with the Related Press.
“The on-site intervention remains to be ongoing. At this second we will affirm greater than 15 useless and dozens injured,” Czech police stated Thursday evening on X, hours after the capturing was first reported. “We have now no data presently that the perpetrator is linked to any terrorist group.”
Police stated that they had accomplished a sweep for explosives and had been figuring out victims. They stated that they might contact embassies if foreigners had been among the many useless. A consultant for the U.S. Embassy in Prague didn’t instantly remark.
Charles College, based in 1348 and named for the Holy Roman Emperor Charles IV, is the biggest and most prestigious college within the Czech Republic. Twenty p.c of its greater than 49,000 college students come from overseas, together with many from the USA. Its buildings are unfold all through the town fairly than being concentrated in a central campus. The college’s School of Arts is subsequent to the sq. the place the capturing passed off.
The Czech Republic has extra permissive gun legal guidelines than most international locations in Europe, even permitting hid carry with a allow. Nonetheless, the nation requires residents to take strict exams earlier than with the ability to receive weapons. Mass killings are uncommon however not unparalleled. In 2019, a gunman killed six folks and himself at a Czech hospital within the japanese metropolis of Ostrava. In 2015, a gunman shot eight folks and himself within the city of Uhersky Brod.
Thursday’s killings are the worst within the nation because it break up from Slovakia in 1992, in keeping with Agence France-Presse.
Czech President Petr Pavel stated he was “shocked” by Thursday’s shootings.
“I want to categorical my deep remorse and honest condolences to the households and kin of the victims claimed by the capturing,” Pavel posted on X.
European Fee President Ursula von der Leyen stated she was “shocked by the mindless violence of the capturing that claimed a number of lives in the present day.”
“I categorical my deepest condolences to the households of the victims and to the Czech folks as an entire,” she stated on X.
This can be a growing story.
