Eight die in Finland school shooting
Updated on 07 November 2007
At least eight people are dead and several more injured after a shooting at a school in southern Finland.
Shortly before lunchtime an 18-year-old gunman entered Jokela high school, 40 miles north of the Finnish capital Helsinki. He shot dead seven pupils and the headteacher and injured others in the country's first-ever school shooting.
He then shot and injured himself and is currently in a critical condition in hospital.
Hours before the killings, a video was posted on the YouTube website predicting the massacre. YouTube has now withdrawn over 80 videos linked to his account, some of them featuring Nazi imagery.
Channel 4 News accessed some of the the pages before they were withdrawn, which you may find disturbing.
The gunman was a pupil at Jokela high school, a teacher who witnessed the attack said, and he had walked through the school firing into classroom after classroom.
The YouTube video, set to a song called Stray Bullet, shows a still photo of a low building that appears to be Jokela high school. The photo breaks apart to reveal a red-tinted picture of a man pointing a handgun at the camera.
'A pupil I have taught myself was running towards me, screaming, a pistol in his hand'Kim Kiuru, teacher
"He (the gunman) was moving systematically through the school hallways, knocking on the doors and shooting through the doors," said Kim Kiuru, who was teaching a grade eight class when the shooting began.
"It felt unreal; a pupil I have taught myself was running towards me, screaming, a pistol in his hand."
The YouTube video, entitled "Jokela High School Massacre - 11/7/2007", was posted by a user called Sturmgeist89.
"I am prepared to fight and die for my cause," read a posting by a user of the same name.
"I, as a natural selector, will eliminate all who I see unfit, disgraces of human race and failures of natural selection." "Sturmgeist" means storm spirit in German.
Hours after the shooting the user's account was suspended.
Despite having the world's third-largest per capita handgun ownership, violent incidents are rare at Finnish schools.
According to Finnish media, there have been four stabbings at schools since 1999. None of these caused fatalities.
Finnish Prime Minister Matti Vanhanen told reporters the shooting was an "extremely sad event".
