Helsinki, PTI
A 12-year-old student opened fire at a secondary school in southern Finland and wounded three other students on Tuesday, police said. The suspect was later arrested.
Heavily armed police cordoned off the lower secondary school, with some 800 students, in the city of Vantaa, just outside the capital, Helsinki, after receiving a call about a shooting incident at 09:08 a.m.
Police said both the suspect and the wounded were 12 years old. The suspect was arrested in the Helsinki area later Tuesday with a handgun in his possession, police said.
The condition of the three wounded students wasn’t immediately clear.
Finnish PM Petteri Orpo posted on X that he was deeply shocked over the shooting.
In November 2007, a 18-year-old student armed with a semi-automatic pistol opened fire at the premises of the Jokela high school in Tuusula, southern Finland, killing nine people. He was found dead with self-inflicted wounds.
In the Nordic nation of 5.6 million, there are more than 1.5 million licensed firearms and about 430,000 license holders, according to the Finnish Interior Ministry. Hunting and gun-ownership have long traditions in the sparsely-populated northern European country.
