Ten people were killed on Tuesday in a mass shooting at a high school in Graz, Austria. The gunman, a former student, was also found dead, in an apparent suicide, the police said.
It was the deadliest attack in recent Austrian history and one of the deadliest recent school shootings in Europe.
The Austrian chancellor, Christian Stocker, called the shooting a “national tragedy” and declared three days of mourning.
What happened?
Officials said that the gunman, 21, opened fire on Tuesday morning at BORG Dreierschützengasse, where he was a former student. He was found dead in a school bathroom. The police have not released the suspect’s name.
The police said they received reports of a shooting around 10 a.m. on Tuesday and responded with heavy force. Specially trained COBRA units — Austria’s version of SWAT teams — arrived at the scene, as did a police helicopter. More than 300 officers responded.
The school was evacuated in the late morning, with students sent to a nearby stadium.
Austrian schools were closed on Monday for the Pentecost holiday, so students had just returned to classes after a long weekend.
What’s known about the suspect and the victims?
Austrian officials said that six of those killed on campus were female and three were male. Another victim, a woman, later died at a hospital. Authorities said they would not release more information on the victims until preliminary investigations were finished.
The police said the gunman attended the school but did not graduate. He arrived there on Tuesday armed with a pistol and a longer weapon; the police did not clarify whether it was a shotgun or a rifle. Officials said he had acquired the weapons legally.
How rare are mass shootings in Austria?
There were two mass shootings in Austria between 2000 and 2022, both since 2010, according to an analysis published in 2024 by the Nelson A. Rockefeller Institute of Government, a think tank based in Albany, N.Y. During that period, there were 109 mass shootings in the United States, according to the institute’s records.
Graz, Austria’s second-largest city after the capital, Vienna, last experienced a mass attack in 2015, when a man with a history of domestic violence drove a car into crowds and then attacked bystanders with a knife. Three people were killed.
Austria has also had terrorism-related violence in the past few years.
In 2024, security officials thwarted a plot to attack people at a Taylor Swift concert in Vienna. In 2020, a gunman killed four people and wounded 23 others in Vienna. The man had previously been arrested on suspicion of trying to join ISIS.
Are guns common in Austria?
Austrian civilians are among the most heavily armed in the world, according to a 2017 estimate from the Small Arms Survey, a research group based in Geneva.
At the time, Austria ranked 12th in the world in gun holding per person, the data show. Austrians held about 2.6 million guns, according to the survey, or about 30 firearms for every 100 civilians. The United States then had about 120.5 guns for every 100 people, the survey showed.
Aaron Karp, a senior consultant at the Small Arms Survey, said in a phone interview that there were 1.4 million registered firearms in Austria as of early 2023, citing data provided by the Austrian government.
“Austria, in many respects, has just been extremely lucky,” said Mr. Karp, who described the country as having both “a strong gun culture” and “relatively low homicide figures.”
Pump-action shotguns are prohibited in Austria, which has a population of 9.2 million. And official authorization is required to legally acquire a handgun, a semiautomatic firearm or a repeating shotgun. Austrians must be 21 years old to legally acquire most pistols or semiautomatic weapons, Mr. Karp said.