Turkiye school shooting leaves 11 injured as 15-year-old suspect is held

Source : INDIA TODAY NEWS

At least 11 people were wounded after a gunman opened fire near a high school in western Turkiye on Tuesday, officials said. Police later arrested a suspect. Education Minister Mustafa Ciftci said three of the injured were in critical condition and were receiving intensive care, while one person had been discharged from hospital.

The shooting took place outside a vocational and technical high school in the Turgutlu district of Manisa province, according to the governor’s office. HaberTurk news channel reported that the assailant was a 15-year-old student at the school who arrived armed with a shotgun, fired randomly near the school and then tried to flee on foot.

Ciftci said the assailant had taken the gun from his grandparents’ house. Justice Minister Akin Gurlek said the motive for the attack was not known. He said two chief prosecutors had been appointed to investigate the shooting, including claims that the student was bullied at the school. Gurlek also said the assailant’s parents and grandfather, who owned the gun, had been taken into custody as part of the investigation.

The governor’s office said police and medical teams were sent to the scene. Security camera footage showed the alleged attacker walking down a street carrying a weapon, while another video showed him running down a street with the weapon still in his hand. Cumhuriyet newspaper reported that anxious parents rushed to the school and confrontations broke out with police officers who had blocked the entrance to the building.

The attack came months after two school shootings this year that had shocked Turkiye. The government increased security at educational facilities at the start of the academic year last week. In April, 16 people, most of them students, were wounded when a former student opened fire at a high school in Sanliurfa province in the southeast before later killing himself. The next day, a 14-year-old student opened fire on two classrooms at his school in nearby Kahramanmaras province, killing eight students and a teacher and wounding 13 others before being killed by police.

With PTI Inputs

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SOURCE :- TIMES OF INDIA