<\/p>\n
Czech authorities sought a motive on Friday in a student\u2019s gun attack that killed 13 people<\/a> at a Prague university, where tearful mourners have left a sea of candles to grieve for the victims.<\/p>\n The gunfire on Thursday at the Charles University\u2019s Faculty of Arts sparked frantic scenes of students running from the attack that was the Czech Republic\u2019s worst shooting in decades.<\/p>\n A makeshift memorial of hundreds of candles flickered outside the university on Friday as police pursued the investigation at the campus in Prague\u2019s historic centre.<\/p>\n The gunman, a 24-year-old student, killed himself after the attack, shooting dead 13 people and wounding 25 others.<\/p>\n \u201cWe know all 14 dead and their identity. It\u2019s 13 victims of the mad gunman and the gunman himself,\u201d Interior Minister Vit Rakusan told public broadcaster Czech TV<\/em>, revising down a previous toll of 14 victims.<\/p>\n He added that three of the wounded were foreigners. The Dutch foreign ministry said earlier that one of them was a Dutch national.<\/p>\n All the victims were killed inside the building and at least some were the gunman\u2019s fellow students.<\/p>\n Rakusan had said earlier that there was no link between the shooting and \u201cinternational terrorism\u201d and that the student acted on his own.<\/p>\n Although police said there was no longer any imminent threat, they were still guarding selected sites, including schools, on Friday as a preventive measure and \u201ca signal we are here\u201d.<\/p>\n The government has declared a national day of mourning on Saturday, with flags on official buildings to be flown at half-staff and people asked to observe a minute\u2019s silence at noon.<\/p>\n The gunman, previously unknown to the police, had a \u201chuge arsenal of weapons and ammunition\u201d, Police Chief Martin Vondrasek said after the killings on Thursday.<\/p>\n Police had started a search for the student even before the mass shooting after his father was found dead in the village of Hostoun west of Prague.<\/p>\n The gunman \u201cleft for Prague saying he wanted to kill himself\u201d, Vondrasek said, Police had started the search at a Faculty of Arts building where the gunman was expected to show up for a lecture, but he went instead to the faculty\u2019s main building nearby.<\/p>\n Police learned about the shooting at around 1400 GMT and sent a rapid response unit to the scene. Twenty minutes later, the gunman was dead.<\/p>\n Citing an inquiry into the student\u2019s social media activities, Vondrasek said the gunman was inspired by a \u201csimilar case that happened in Russia\u201d, without providing further details.<\/p>\n Vondrasek said police believed the same gunman had also killed a young man and his two-month-old daughter in a pram during a walk in a forest on the eastern outskirts of Prague on December 15.<\/p>\n The investigation into those murders, which had shocked Prague, had stalled until evidence found in Hostoun linked the gunman with the crime.<\/p>\n The shooting at Charles University, which sits near major tourist sites like the 14th-century Charles Bridge, was the deadliest since the Czech Republic emerged as an independent state in 1993.<\/p>\n \u201cThere is no justification for this horrendous act,\u201d Prime Minister Petr Fiala said.<\/p>\n US President Joe Biden sent his condolences, slamming the \u201csenseless\u201d shooting.<\/p>\n \u201cMy heart is with those who lost their lives in today\u2019s senseless shooting in Prague, those injured, and the Czech people,\u201d he wrote on X.<\/p>\n \u201cOur authorities are in touch with Czech law enforcement, and we stand ready to offer additional support if needed.\u201d<\/p>\n French President Emmanuel Macron, European Union chief Ursula von der Leyen and Ukraine President Volodymyr Zelensky were among those also offering condolences.<\/p>\n Though mass gun violence is unusual in the Czech Republic, the nation has been rocked by some instances in recent years.<\/p>\n A 63-year-old man shot seven men and a woman dead in 2015 before killing himself in a restaurant in the southeastern town of Uhersky Brod.<\/p>\n In 2019, a man killed six people in the waiting room of a hospital in the eastern city of Ostrava, with another woman dying days later. The man shot himself dead about three hours after the attack.<\/p>\n<\/p><\/div>\n","protected":false},"excerpt":{"rendered":" Czech authorities sought a motive on Friday in a student\u2019s gun attack that killed 13 people at a Prague university, where tearful mourners have left a sea of candles to grieve for the victims. The gunfire on Thursday at the Charles University\u2019s Faculty of Arts sparked frantic scenes of students running from the attack that […]<\/p>\n","protected":false},"author":2,"featured_media":38527,"comment_status":"open","ping_status":"open","sticky":false,"template":"","format":"standard","meta":{"_acf_changed":false,"om_disable_all_campaigns":false,"_monsterinsights_skip_tracking":false,"site-sidebar-layout":"default","site-content-layout":"","ast-site-content-layout":"default","site-content-style":"default","site-sidebar-style":"default","ast-global-header-display":"","ast-banner-title-visibility":"","ast-main-header-display":"","ast-hfb-above-header-display":"","ast-hfb-below-header-display":"","ast-hfb-mobile-header-display":"","site-post-title":"","ast-breadcrumbs-content":"","ast-featured-img":"","footer-sml-layout":"","ast-disable-related-posts":"","theme-transparent-header-meta":"","adv-header-id-meta":"","stick-header-meta":"","header-above-stick-meta":"","header-main-stick-meta":"","header-below-stick-meta":"","astra-migrate-meta-layouts":"default","ast-page-background-enabled":"default","ast-page-background-meta":{"desktop":{"background-color":"var(--ast-global-color-4)","background-image":"","background-repeat":"repeat","background-position":"center center","background-size":"auto","background-attachment":"scroll","background-type":"","background-media":"","overlay-type":"","overlay-color":"","overlay-opacity":"","overlay-gradient":""},"tablet":{"background-color":"","background-image":"","background-repeat":"repeat","background-position":"center center","background-size":"auto","background-attachment":"scroll","background-type":"","background-media":"","overlay-type":"","overlay-color":"","overlay-opacity":"","overlay-gradient":""},"mobile":{"background-color":"","background-image":"","background-repeat":"repeat","background-position":"center center","background-size":"auto","background-attachment":"scroll","background-type":"","background-media":"","overlay-type":"","overlay-color":"","overlay-opacity":"","overlay-gradient":""}},"ast-content-background-meta":{"desktop":{"background-color":"var(--ast-global-color-5)","background-image":"","background-repeat":"repeat","background-position":"center center","background-size":"auto","background-attachment":"scroll","background-type":"","background-media":"","overlay-type":"","overlay-color":"","overlay-opacity":"","overlay-gradient":""},"tablet":{"background-color":"var(--ast-global-color-5)","background-image":"","background-repeat":"repeat","background-position":"center center","background-size":"auto","background-attachment":"scroll","background-type":"","background-media":"","overlay-type":"","overlay-color":"","overlay-opacity":"","overlay-gradient":""},"mobile":{"background-color":"var(--ast-global-color-5)","background-image":"","background-repeat":"repeat","background-position":"center center","background-size":"auto","background-attachment":"scroll","background-type":"","background-media":"","overlay-type":"","overlay-color":"","overlay-opacity":"","overlay-gradient":""}},"fifu_image_url":"https:\/\/i.dawn.com\/large\/2023\/12\/22191838cd198ff.jpg?r=191928","fifu_image_alt":"","footnotes":""},"categories":[192],"tags":[],"class_list":["post-38526","post","type-post","status-publish","format-standard","has-post-thumbnail","hentry","category-islamabad-news"],"acf":[],"aioseo_notices":[],"aioseo_head":"\n\t\t\n\t\n\t\n\t\n\t\n\t\n\t\t\n\t\t\n\t\t\n\t\t\n\t\t\n\t\t\n\t\t\n\t\t\n\t\t\n\t\t\n\t\t\n\t\t\n\t\t\n\t\t\n\t\t\u2018Huge arsenal\u2019<\/h2>\n
\ndeclining to confirm whether the gunman had killed his father.<\/p>\n\u2018Senseless\u2019<\/h2>\n