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, Reuters reported.
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," 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," he said.
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.
/Trend/