Germany was in shock yesterday after a 19-year-old masked gunman shot 17 people, including two female students, before killing himself in a school massacre in the eastern city of Erfurt.Derek Scally reports from Erfurt.
The black-clad gunman, a recently-expelled student of the Gutenberg secondary school, burst into a classroom during an exam yesterday morning around 11 a.m. and started shooting with a pump-action rifle and a handgun.
"He was all dressed in black, gloves and hat and all I could see was his eyes," said one shaking female student.
Another student saw the gunman emerge from a bathroom with a rifle mounted on his back.
"He passed us in the corridor without paying any attention and walked straight into the secretary's office and started shooting," he said.
Witnesses said the gunman walked through the building, opening classroom doors and targeting staff, killing nine male teachers, four female teachers, a secretary and two female students, all within minutes.
A caretaker heard the shots and notified the local police. Two officers arrived on the scene and discovered two dead bodies in the entrance hall.
Moments later the gunman appeared and opened fire, shooting dead one of the policeman.
A special commando unit immediately surrounded the school, which has nearly 700 students.
As the shooting continued, around 180 students were still trapped in the building.
Commandos stormed the building shortly before noon and came upon what was described as a "terrible scene". "Bodies lay in the halls, in bathrooms and classrooms," said Mr Rainer Grube, a police spokesman.
The gunman, who had barricaded himself into a room, shot himself as officers approached.
"The gunman killed himself when he saw that there was no way out for him," said Mr Grube.
For the students trapped inside the building, their ordeal ended nearly three hours later when they were led, pale and shaking, out of the school to worried parents at the gate.
They were all receiving counselling yesterday evening, while four people injured in the attack were brought to hospital. Police were last night still investigating student reports that there was a second gunman. They had no motive for the shootings yesterday evening.
Friends of the as yet unidentified gunman described him as an intelligent student who was "full of life" and often spoke of his wish to become famous. The massacre is one of the most violent attacks in German post-war history, and ranks alongside the 1996 school shooting in Dunblane and the 1999 massacre in Columbine, Arkansas. Yesterday evening Erfurt residents were in shock and German politicians speechless.
"We are stunned at this horrific crime. No explanation we could give would go far enough right now," said the Chancellor, Mr Gerhard Schröder, expressing his sympathy for the families of the victims and the students who witnessed the attack. He ordered the German flag on the Reichstag in Berlin to be flown at half-mast.
"We are all in one room. One teacher is dead, we are crying"