At least nine people were killed on Tuesday in a mass shooting at a high school in Graz, Austria, the city’s mayor said. The assailant was also found dead, the police said.
The mass shooting is the deadliest attack in recent Austrian history and one of the deadliest recent school shootings across Europe.
What happened?
Students and at least one adult were killed, Mayor Elke Kahr of Graz said in comments to the Austria Press Agency, the national news agency.
The shooter, who police said acted alone, died at the scene, Ms. Kahr said.
Police said they received reports of a shooting around 10 a.m. local time on Tuesday and responded with heavy force. Specially trained COBRA units, Austria’s version of SWAT teams, arrived at the scene, as did a police helicopter.
The school was evacuated in the late morning, with students sent to a nearby stadium. By noon, police said that there was no further threat.
Austrian schools were closed on Monday for the Pentecost holiday, so students had just returned to classes after the long weekend.
What’s known about the suspect and the victims?
Austrian officials have not yet identified any of the victims. They have also not released any details about the shooter or a possible motive.
How rare are mass shootings in Austria?
There were two mass shootings in Austria between 2000 and 2022, both since 2010, according to an analysis published in 2024 by the Nelson A. Rockefeller Institute of Government, a think tank based in Albany, N.Y. During that period, there were 109 mass shootings in the United States, according to the institute’s records.
Graz, Austria’s second-largest city after the capital, Vienna, last experienced a mass attack in 2015. In that incident, a man with a history of domestic violence killed three people after driving a car into crowds and then attacking bystanders with a knife.
Austria has also had terrorism-related violence in the past few years.
In 2024, security officials thwarted a plot to attack people at a Taylor Swift concert in Vienna. In 2020, a gunman killed four people and wounded 23 others in Vienna. The man had previously been arrested on suspicion of trying to join ISIS.
Are guns common in Austria?
Austrian civilians are among the most heavily armed in the world, according to a 2017 estimate from the Small Arms Survey, a research group based in Geneva.
Austrians hold about 2.6 million guns, only about 837,000 of which are registered, according to the survey. Austria ranked 12th in the world in gun holdings per person.
That’s about 30 firearms for every 100 civilians. The United States had about 120.5 guns for every 100 people during that same time, the survey showed.
Pump-action shotguns are prohibited in Austria, which has a population of 9.2 million. Official authorization is required to legally acquire a handgun, a semiautomatic firearm or a repeating shotgun.
Amelia Nierenberg is a breaking news reporter for The Times in London, covering international news.
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