Czechs mourn Prague university shooting victims

Church bells rang, flags flew at half-mast and masses were held across the Czech Republic on Saturday, a day of national mourning for the victims of a deadly shooting at Prague’s Charles University.

A heavily armed 24-year-old student killed 14 people and then himself at the Faculty of Arts on Thursday.

The lone gunman also wounded 24 others, including three foreigners.

The gunfire sparked frantic scenes of students running from the attacker, with some escaping onto the roof and then jumping onto a balcony below, while others clung to top-floor windows from ledges.

On Saturday, daily life halted for a minute of silence for the victims in the EU and NATO member country at noon (1100 GMT).

“We are all trying to build heaven on earth, but the reality of life shows us that evil exists,” said Prague Archbishop Jan Graubner, celebrating a mass for the victims at the Gothic St Vitus Cathedral at Prague Castle.

President Petr Pavel and other senior politicians were among those attending, and many in the cathedral were in tears.

“The life of each person in its uniqueness enriches and becomes a part of the lives of others, and its loss is therefore irreplaceable,” Charles University rector Milena Kralickova said at the mass, her voice breaking.

The choir singing at the mass was led by David Eben, a musician and musicology teacher at the Faculty of Arts.

His department lost its director, Lenka Hlavkova, a mother of two, in the attack.

– Two-month-old victim –

During Saturday’s ceremony, Faculty of Arts students brought eighteen roses to the altar — 14 for the university victims, one for the gunman and three for other people he had killed.

Police said the gunman also appeared to have killed a randomly chosen young man and his two-month-old daughter in a Prague forest on December 15.

“A ballistic analysis proved the gun used in the… forest was IDENTICAL with a gun found at the university gunman’s home,” police said on X.

On Thursday, he killed his father in a village west of Prague where the family lived and then left for the capital, leaving a suicide note, police said.

Police launched a manhunt but appeared to have missed him at the university, searching a Faculty of Arts building where he was expected to attend a lecture, while the gunman walked into the faculty’s main building nearby.

Police learned about the shooting at the university at around 1400 GMT and sent a rapid-response unit to the scene. Twenty minutes later, the gunman was dead.

Prague’s chief of police Martin Vondrasek said the killer had had “an enormous arsenal of weapons and ammunition” at his disposal.

The gunman appeared to have been inspired by a similar shooting in Russia, police said, citing his social media account.

– 12th-safest country –

Since Thursday’s shooting, police have arrested four people who had either threatened similar attacks or express support for the killings, said a statement from the country’s Interior Minister Vit Rakusan.

This week’s shooting in Prague’s UNESCO-listed historic centre was the deadliest since the Czech Republic emerged as an independent state in 1993.

Sympathy poured in from across the world with Pope Francis, US President Joe Biden, Britain’s King Charles and many others sending their condolences.

The Czech Republic is the world’s 12th-safest country, according to the 2023 Global Peace Index, and mass gun violence is rare.

But in 2015, a man shot dead seven men and a woman before killing himself in a restaurant in the southeast, while another gunman killed seven people in an eastern hospital and then himself in 2019.

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