The Czech Foreign Ministry confirmed that three of those wounded were foreigners – two from United Arab Emirates and one from the Netherlands,
Officials said there was no evidence that the shooter had links to international terrorism.
03:02
Gunman kills at least 14, wounds dozens in unprecedented attack at Prague university
Gunman kills at least 14, wounds dozens in unprecedented attack at Prague university
The carnage in the heart of Prague’s historic centre on Thursday lasted about 20 minutes and left the country of 11 million shaken.
Czech President Petr Pavel said he was “shocked” by the violence and expressed “deep regret and sincere condolences to the families and relatives of the victims”.
“We are all shocked by this horrific act,” Prime Minister Petr Fiala said after an emergency meeting of his cabinet. “It’s hard to find words to express condemnation but also pain and grief that the entire society is feeling.”
Church bells will ring across the country at noon on December 23 to honour the victims.
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Leaders across the nation’s political spectrum and around the world offered their condolences.
German Chancellor Olaf Scholz said he was “deeply shocked” by the attack. The White House said President Joe Biden was “praying for the families who lost loved ones and everyone else who has been affected by the senseless act of violence”.
Several guns and a large amount of ammunition were found in the building hosting the Faculty of Arts, and only a quick police reaction prevented dozens more fatalities, Interior Minister Vit Rakusan said.
The shooter legally owned several weapons, according to Martin Vondrasek, the police chief.
Earlier in the day, authorities found the killer’s father dead in the village of Hostoun west of Prague. They also got information that he had left for the capital intending to kill himself, he said.
Citing a probe into social media, Vondrasek said the gunman was inspired by a “similar case that happened in Russia”, without going into details.
Czech Education Minister Mikulas Bek, who studied at the department, placed a candle at Charles University’s main building in sympathy for the victims.
Czech officials didn’t immediately suggest a motive for the shooting – a rare event in a country that limits access to firearms by requiring gun owners to pass written and practical tests as well as psychological screenings.
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“It’s an unimaginable tragedy,” Rakusan said. “The atmosphere of pre-Christmas Czech Republic has been changed, by an act of one insane shooter, into something unrecognisable.”
Students locked themselves in classrooms or ran out of the building with their hands over their heads after shots rang out, Czech television reported.
TV footage showed people trying to hide by standing on the ledge of the building. Some found shelter in the nearby seat of the Prague Philharmonic. Overall, 25 people were wounded, including 10 seriously.
Dozens of police cars and police officers, including some with machine guns, cordoned off an area around the scene, which is in the heart of Prague’s famed centre.
The university department where the shooting occurred is in a limestone building on Jan Palach Square, with a view of the Prague Castle across the Vltava river.
Founded in 1348, the Charles University is one of the world’s oldest. Prague, the Czech capital that was once behind the Iron Curtain, attracts millions of tourists every year.
Though mass gun violence is unusual in the Czech Republic, the nation has been rocked by some instances in recent years.
A 63-year-old man shot seven men and a woman dead in 2015 before killing himself in a restaurant in the southeastern town of Uhersky Brod.
In 2019, a man killed six people in the waiting room of a hospital in the eastern city of Ostrava, with another woman dying days later. The man shot himself dead about three hours after the attack.
Additional reporting by Agence France-Presse