Russian school shooter with “Nazi symbols” leaves 13 dead, including seven children, in Izhevsk

A gunman wearing “Nazi symbols and a balaclava” shot dead 13 people, including seven children, in a shooting spree at a school in central Russia on Monday, officials said.

Another 14 children and seven adults were also injured in the attack on School No. 88 in Izhevsk, some 600 miles east of Moscow. The shooter killed himself after the massacre.

While the identity of the gunman and the motive for the attack have yet to be clarified, the Russian investigative committee released a short video showing the gunman’s body on the floor of a classroom surrounded by fallen furniture. A red swastika appears to have been drawn in a circle on the chest area of ​​his black shirt.

The commission of inquiry into serious crimes added that among the six adults shot dead were school teachers and security guards. The gunman was reportedly not carrying any identification documents with him during the slaughter and a criminal investigation into the attack is ongoing.

Speaking outside the school on Monday as medical staff rushed onto the campus, regional governor Alexander Brechalov confirmed “victims and wounded among children.”

There have been at least 13 mass shootings in Russia over the past three years, including a school shooting in May 2021 that killed nine people. The massacre in western Russia’s Kazan, which also injured 23 others, was carried out by a former student.

Another shooting shook Russia on Monday when a gunman shot dead a commander trying to conscript residents in Siberia’s Irkutsk region.

Since last Wednesday, when Vladimir Putin announced he would mobilize 300,000 new troops for his invasion of Ukraine, throwing the country into chaos, more than a dozen attacks on military posts across the country have been recorded.

During the war in Ukraine that began in February, Putin and other Russian officials justified the bloody war with “denazification.”