Student arrested after Moscow school shooting - Financial Times

A Moscow high school student was arrested on Monday after holding a class at his school hostage and shooting dead a teacher and a police officer, according to Russia’s interior ministry.

State television reported on Monday morning that an armed man had entered School No 263, a secondary school in the north of the Russian capital, and taken an entire class of more than 20 pupils hostage. The government said all other people at the school had been evacuated and identified the gunman as a student.

Some Muscovites expressed relief that the incident was not apparently an act of terrorism. It comes amid worries about the risk of terrorist acts ahead of or during the Winter Olympics which open on Friday in the southern Russian city of Sochi.

An Islamist insurgent group in the restive North Caucasus region has threatened to disrupt the games with terrorist attacks.

Russia still suffers from the trauma of a hostage crisis in Beslan in the North Caucasus republic of North Ossetia 10 years ago, which killed more than 380 people, most of them children.

The government said another policeman had been wounded by the gunman on Monday but did not immediately give further details. The Investigative Committee has opened an inquiry on charges of hostage taking and murder, said Vladimir Markin, press secretary of Russia’s top prosecution body.

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