MOSCOW, November 14. /TASS/: One person was killed and three injured on Thursday when a student opened fire at a college in Blagoveshchensk, a city in Russia’s Far Eastern Amur Region, the Amur Region department of the Russian interior ministry said.
The shooter committed suicide by turning the gun on himself.
"Bodies of two young men, including the shooter, were found at the site of the incident. Also, according to early reports, three were injured," the department said in a statement. "Preliminary information suggests that the gunman committed suicide using his weapon. It is registered as belonging to this citizen."
The statement says that a young man ran up to a road police squad and informed them about the shooting in a college building nearby. Police spotted an armed man in the second-storey window, who fired a shot at them. The officers returned fire, and the gunman was subsequently blocked in a lecture hall.
"The officers were not injured," the statement said. "The young people who were wounded are receiving medical assistance."
Two teenagers injured in a college shooting in the Russian city of Blagoveshchensk have undergone surgeries at the Amur Regional Children's Clinical Hospital, the regional government said in a statement.
"Two 17-year-old teenagers with gunshot wounds were admitted [to the hospital] at 11:00 (02:00 GMT). One of them had suffered wounds to his neck, the back of his head and his right shoulder. The other teen has a buttock wound. Both have undergone surgeries, one of them is in critical condition and remains in the intensive care unit, the other one is in serious condition," Chief of the hospital’s Polytrauma Center Vladimir Dudkin said, according to the statement.
The third injured person was admitted to Blagoveshchensk’s First City Hospital. The hospital’s Chief Medical Officer Alexander Suchkov said that he had also undergone surgery. "He is in the intensive care unit in critical condition. He has a buttock wound," he said.
Police sees the shooter’s conflict with fellow students as a possible reason for the incident.
An emergencies source earlier told TASS that the shooting began after a college student, who was late for classes, was told to leave the lecture hall. He said the incident occurred at about 10:00 local time on Thursday (04:00 Moscow time).’
A spokesperson for the Amur Region health ministry told TASS that the injured were diagnosed with "multiple gunshot wounds."
The Russian Investigative Committee said on its website it had launched a criminal case into the shooting.
"According to the investigation, a 19-year-old student of the Amur College of Construction and Utilities opened fire on the premises of this educational facility," investigators said. "As a result, a 19-year-old man was killed, three other young men - aged 17, 19 and 20 - were injured and admitted to hospital."
Amur Region Governor Vasily Orlov said on his Instagram page that law enforcement officers and investigators were working at the scene to determine the details, motives and reasons behind the tragedy. "It is now known that there was one attacker, and he is dead," he said.
Blagoveshchensk mayor Valentina Kalita will gather an emergency commission later in the day to discuss security measures in educational facilities in the wake of the incident, a city administration source told TASS.
