Police at the scene | Photo Credit: Reuters.
A boy of 12 was said to have opened fire at a Junior Secondary school in southern Finland and wounded three other children today, police said. The shooting at the Viertola school in Vantaa, a suburb of the capital, Helsinki was reported to the Police Tuesday morning prompting the police to cordon off the school.
Authorities asked people in the area to stay away from the school and to remain indoors while not letting in strangers.
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The school has about 800 pupils from first to ninth grade and a staff of 90 people, according to the local municipality.
The Finnish newspaper, Ilta-Sanomat, the suspect was arrested a few hours later in the Helsinki area which is about 50 minutes’ walk from the scene of the crime.
The reason for the attack by the student is yet to be ascertained. Police said both the suspect and the three wounded were 12 years old.
Previous school shootings in Finland have put a harsh focus on the country’s gun policy. In 2007, Pekka-Eric Auvinen shot and killed six students, a school nurse, the principal and himself using a handgun at Jokela High School near Helsinki.
Finland tightened its gun legislation in 2010, introducing an aptitude test for all firearms licence applicants but the age limit for applicants was changed to 20 from 18.
There are more than 1.5m licensed firearms and about 430,000 licence holders in the nation of 5.6 million people, where hunting and target shooting are popular activities.
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