MOSCOW A Moscow high-school student shot a teacher and a police officer dead and held more than 20 other students hostage in a classroom on Monday before he was disarmed and detained, police said, just days before Russia hosts the Winter Olympics.
In a rare school shooting in Russia, the attacker entered his school in northern Moscow carrying a rifle and held students and a teacher hostage in a biology classroom, police in the capital said.
Police later said the attacker had been detained and had been led out of the school and into a waiting car. According to the Lifenews website, he initially shot one officer and then opened fire at others who arrived at the scene.
“The person who took 20 people and a teacher hostage is a student in the upper classes at the same school. He has been neutralized and all the students have been freed,rdquo; Interior Ministry spokesman Andrei Pilipchuk said on state TV.
“One policeman was fatally wounded during the operation and died in hospital, and a teacher at School No. 263 was also killed,rdquo; he continued.
The shooting sent dozens of students scurrying out the school while a police helicopter landed in a snow-covered field outside.
It came with Russia in the global spotlight four days before it hosts the 2014 Winter Olympics in the Black Sea resort city of Sochi.