Czech authorities sought a motive on Friday in a student\u2019s gun attack that killed 13 people at a Prague university, where tearful mourners have left a sea of candles to grieve for the victims. The gunfire on Thursday at the Charles University\u2019s Faculty of Arts sparked frantic scenes of students running from the attack that was the Czech Republic\u2019s worst shooting in decades. A makeshift memorial of hundreds of candles flickered outside the university on Friday as police pursued the investigation at the campus in Prague\u2019s historic centre. The gunman, a 24-year-old student, killed himself after the attack, shooting dead 13 people and wounding 25 others. \u201cWe know all 14 dead and their identity. It\u2019s 13 victims of the mad gunman and the gunman himself,\u201d Interior Minister Vit Rakusan told public broadcaster Czech TV, revising down a previous toll of 14 victims. He added that three of the wounded were foreigners. The Dutch foreign ministry said earlier that one of them was a Dutch national. All the victims were killed inside the building and at least some were the gunman\u2019s fellow students. Rakusan had said earlier that there was no link between the shooting and \u201cinternational terrorism\u201d and that the student acted on his own. Although police said there was no longer any imminent threat, they were still guarding selected sites, including schools, on Friday as a preventive measure and \u201ca signal we are here\u201d. The government has declared a national day of mourning on Saturday, with flags on official buildings to be flown at half-staff and people asked to observe a minute\u2019s silence at noon. \u2018Huge arsenal\u2019 The gunman, previously unknown to the police, had a \u201chuge arsenal of weapons and ammunition\u201d, Police Chief Martin Vondrasek said after the killings on Thursday. Police had started a search for the student even before the mass shooting after his father was found dead in the village of Hostoun west of Prague. The gunman \u201cleft for Prague saying he wanted to kill himself\u201d, Vondrasek said, declining to confirm whether the gunman had killed his father. Police had started the search at a Faculty of Arts building where the gunman was expected to show up for a lecture, but he went instead to the faculty\u2019s main building nearby. Police learned about the shooting at around 1400 GMT and sent a rapid response unit to the scene. Twenty minutes later, the gunman was dead. Citing an inquiry into the student\u2019s social media activities, Vondrasek said the gunman was inspired by a \u201csimilar case that happened in Russia\u201d, without providing further details. Vondrasek said police believed the same gunman had also killed a young man and his two-month-old daughter in a pram during a walk in a forest on the eastern outskirts of Prague on December 15. The investigation into those murders, which had shocked Prague, had stalled until evidence found in Hostoun linked the gunman with the crime. \u2018Senseless\u2019 The shooting at Charles University, which sits near major tourist sites like the 14th-century Charles Bridge, was the deadliest since the Czech Republic emerged as an independent state in 1993. \u201cThere is no justification for this horrendous act,\u201d Prime Minister Petr Fiala said. Caretaker Foreign Minister Jalil Abbas Jilani extended his condolences over the loss of life. The foreign minister also prayed for the recovery of all the injured. US President Joe Biden sent his condolences, slamming the \u201csenseless\u201d shooting. \u201cMy heart is with those who lost their lives in today\u2019s senseless shooting in Prague, those injured, and the Czech people,\u201d he wrote on X. \u201cOur authorities are in touch with Czech law enforcement, and we stand ready to offer additional support if needed.\u201d French President Emmanuel Macron, European Union chief Ursula von der Leyen and Ukraine President Volodymyr Zelensky were among those also offering condolences. 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.<\/p>\n","protected":false},"excerpt":{"rendered":"
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