At least four people, including three students and a teacher, were shot dead, while 20 others were injured on Wednesday in a school in Turkiye, AP reported, citing a local official.
The attack comes a day after a shooter wounded 16 people and then killed himself in another school.
Mukerrem Unluer, Kahramanmaras province governor, said that a teacher and three students were killed in the latest attack. Speaking to reporters, Unluer said, “A student came to school with guns that we believe belonged to his father in his backpack. He entered two classrooms and opened fire randomly, causing injuries and deaths.”
According to the report, the student who was also killed carried five firearms and seven magazines, which are believed to be his father’s, a retired police officer. Unluer said among those wounded, at least four are reported to be in serious condition, and added that the motive of the attack wasn’t immediately known.
The report added that video footage released by the IHA private news agency showed a person, body and face covered, being evacuated in an ambulance, along with tearful parents who rushed to the school in the southern province’s main city, Kahramanmaras.
Following the incident, police have ramped up security around the school building, and television footage showed ambulances being present in the area.
Turkiye’s Justice Minister Akin Gurlek noted that prosecutors had launched an immediate investigation into the latest shooting case.
Second incident in two days
Earlier on Tuesday, an ex-student opened fire with a shotgun at his former high school in the Siverek district of Sanliurfa province, injuring 16 people before killing himself in a showdown with police. Reports suggest that as many as 10 students and a teacher were among those who were injured.
The 18-year-old attacker fired randomly inside a vocational high school and later killed himself with the same shotgun after being “cornered by police,” Governor Hasan Sildak said.
The governor added that the attacker did not have a criminal record, and the school had been declared safe, and no permanent police officer was assigned to protect it. Sildak called the shooting an “isolated incident.”
According to NTV television and other media reports, the assailant had threatened an attack on the school on social media before the shooting.
Despite these two instances in two days, reports suggest that school shootings in Turkiye are rare. In May 2024, a former student killed a private high school principal in Istanbul with a firearm, five months after he was expelled.
