Gunman kills two in church off Russia’s eastern coast

A gunman opened fire yesterday in a Russian Orthodox cathedral on the island of Sakhalin, off Russia's eastern coast, killing a nun and a churchgoer and wounding six other people, officials said.

The shooting happened as Russian security forces are on high alert due to concerns about possible attacks on the Winter Olympics in Sochi, thousands of kilometres to the west. There was no apparent link to the Winter Games.

The gunman was detained at the scene after the shooting at the main cathedral in the city of Yuzhno-Sakhalinsk on the island in the Sea of Okhotsk, north of Japan, the federal investigative committee said.

It added that the suspect had worked as a security guard in Yuzhno-Sakhalinsk, some 6,650 kilometres from Moscow.

There was no immediate word on a motive for the attack, which came six days after a Moscow teenager killed a teacher and a policeman and held classmates hostage in the first major school shooting in Russia.

Most of the wounded in yesterday's mid-afternoon attack were shot in the legs and their lives were not in danger, RIA cited the regional leader of the Russian Orthodox Church, Archbishop Tikhon, as saying.