2023-12-23 13:15:19
By Le Figaro with AFP
Posted 54 minutes ago
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Thursday, December 21, a student killed 14 people before committing suicide at Charles University, in the historic center of the Czech capital.
Minute of silence, flags at half-mast and masses throughout the country: the Czech Republic pays tribute this Saturday to the victims of the massacre which left 14 dead and 25 injured on Thursday, December 21, at the University of Prague, the worst attack in this type committed in this country.
The government asked Czechs to observe a minute’s silence at midday on Saturday and bells tolled in churches across the EU and NATO member country, two days following a 24-year-old student created terror by shooting students before committing suicide. “It is difficult to find the words to express, on the one hand, the condemnation and, on the other hand, the pain and sorrow that our entire population feels in these days leading up to Christmas”declared Prime Minister Petr Fiala.
“It might have been me”
Students lit thousands of candles in an improvised memorial in front of the Faculty of Arts and at the headquarters of Charles University, in the historic center of the Czech capital. The identities of the victims, students and teachers, began to be published by their relatives and the school. “This might have happened to anyone. In reality, it might have been me”student Antonin Volavka said Friday, lighting a candle at the makeshift memorial.
“It’s very hard for all of us”, the Institute of Musicology reported on Facebook following learning that its director, Lenka Hlavkova, 49, mother of two children, was one of the victims. Other victims include Finnish literature expert Jan Dlask and student Lucie Spindlerova. A Dutch citizen and two from the United Arab Emirates are among the injured.
A link established with an unsolved double murder
Since Thursday, police have arrested four people who threatened to repeat the attack, or approved it. Police surveillance will be organized around certain sites and school buildings, at least until January 1, indicated the Minister of the Interior. The police chief, Martin Vondrasek, stressed that the assailant, unknown to the justice system, had a “huge arsenal of weapons and ammunition”. He added that inspecting the crime scene revealed “the most overwhelming experience” of his 31 years of service in the police. Interior Minister Vit Rakusan said no link might be established between the attack and “international terrorism” and that the assailant had acted on his own initiative.
According to Martin Vondrasek, police began searching for the student even before the shooting because his father’s body was discovered in the village of Hostoun, west of Prague. The student had also told a friend that he was considering suicide in Prague.
Police then searched a building at the Faculty of Arts where the murderer was supposed to report for a class, but he eventually went nearby, to the main university building. Around 2 p.m. GMT the police were alerted to shots fired and sent an intervention unit to the scene. Twenty minutes later, the attacker was dead. According to the shooter’s account on social networks, the latter indicated that he was inspired by a similar attack in Russia, explained Martin Vondrasek.
After a search of the shooter’s home, police established a link with the unsolved murder of a young man and his two-month-old daughter in a forest near Prague on December 15. “A ballistic analysis proved that the weapon used in the forest was identical to the one found at the home of the university shooter”the police said on X.
Deadliest shooting since 1993
The shooting in the historic center of Prague, a UNESCO World Heritage Site, is the deadliest since the Czech Republic became an independent state in 1993. Messages of condolences and sympathy have poured in from around the world from the pope François, American President Joe Biden, French Head of State Emmanuel Macron, his Ukrainian counterpart Volodymyr Zelensky, King Charles of Great Britain in particular.
The Czech Republic is the 12th safest country in the world, according toGlobal Peace Index 2023, and armed violence is rare there. In 2015, a man fatally shot seven men and a woman before killing himself at a southeastern restaurant, while another gunman killed seven people at an eastern hospital and then himself in 2019.
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