A school shooting in the southern province of Kahramanmaras left four dead on Wednesday, with fatalities including two students, a teacher and the shooter, who was reported to have been in the eighth grade (ages 13 to 14).
“An eighth grade student entered two classrooms with firearms brought in his backpack and opened fire indiscriminately, causing deaths and injuries. Unfortunately, we have four fatalities, one teacher and three students and 20 people have been wounded,” Kahramanmaras governor Mukerrem Unluer told a press conference.
Unluer said that it is suspected that the attacker brought guns owned by his father, a former police officer.
The shooter, whose initials are I.A.M., is said to have killed himself, although the details are not yet clear.
“He shot himself during the chaos. It is not yet known whether it was a suicide attempt or whether he shot himself in the confusion,” Unluer said.
The shooter was a student at Aser Calik Secondary School where the mass shooting took place.
The father of the shooter was detained by police and a judicial and administrative investigation was initiated by authorities.
Mass school shootings are a new phenomenon in Turkey. However, this was the second to occur in just two days.
The previous incident happened at Ahmet Koyuncu Vocational and Technical High School in the Siverek district of Sanliurfa. The shooter in this attack, initials O.K., was born in 2007 and was a former student who had switched to distance learning education.
The shooter came to the school with a pump-action shotgun concealed in his bag. With no security personnel at the entrance, O.K. made his way to the classrooms and opened fire, wounding 16 people. Authorities said the shooter later died by suicide with the weapon.