One dead, ten injured in attack at Finnish Vocational College

One person was killed and 10 injured in an attack at a vocational college in eastern Finland on Tuesday, police said, as local media quoted witnesses as saying a young man with a sword had burst into a classroom.

The suspected attacker, who was detained, was among the injured in the town of Kuopio, police said.

“Officers used firearms during the situation. Police have detained one perpetrator. The injured have been evacuated,” East Finland police said in a statement.

Eyewitness reports in Finnish media said the suspected assailant burst into a classroom in Savo Vocational College on Tuesday morning.

“He hit a girl in the neck with a sword and stabbed her in the stomach,” an unnamed eyewitness told Keskisuomalainen newspaper. The attacker also set off “some sort of small firebombs”, the eyewitness said.

Another eyewitness, Roosa Kokkonen, who works in a car garage opposite the college, told Finnish TV channel MTV that a teacher with blood running from her hand came fleeing out of the building.

“While I was helping the teacher, I started hearing other shouts for help. Students were running away and into my garage,” Kokkonen told MTV News.

She also told Finnish news agency STT that students described the weapon as “a long sword”, and that he “started swinging the sword around in the class”.

Police said two of the injured were in a serious condition.

In a tweet, Finnish Prime Minister Antti Rinne described the attack as “shocking and utterly reprehensible”.

AFP