Russians mark day of mourning after fatal school shooting
- The gunman was identified as 19-year-old Ilnaz Galyaviev who had been expelled from a local college over a poor academic record
- The shooting left seven students and two adults dead, including a teacher
Mourners laid flowers on Wednesday at the gates of a Russian school where a day earlier a lone gunman killed nine people, mostly children, in one of the country’s worst shooting incidents in recent history.
Flags were flown at half-mast on official buildings Wednesday, an official day of mourning, while funerals were planned for some of the dead later in the day.
Flowers were piled high outside School No 175 in Kazan, the capital of the predominantly Muslim Russian republic of Tatarstan, where the shooting took place.
“This is a huge and unexpected loss,” Irina Krasnikova, 42, said.
“We live in such a nice city. It’s hard to believe this happened to us … It didn’t happen to my children, but it is so painful, it’s hard to speak”.
The shooting left seven students and two adults dead, including a teacher, which TASS news agency identified as Elvira Ignatyeva who shielded students from the shooter.