One Dead, 10 Injured In Attack At Finnish Vocational College

A man armed with a bladed weapon attacked students at a vocational college in eastern Finland on Tuesday, killing one person and injuring nine others, police said

Helsinki, (APP - UrduPoint / Pakistan Point News - 1st Oct, 2019 ) :A man armed with a bladed weapon attacked students at a vocational college in eastern Finland on Tuesday, killing one person and injuring nine others, police said.

Local media quoted witnesses as saying a young man with a sword had burst into a classroom.

"The suspect was armed with some sort of bladed weapon," a spokesperson for East Finland Police told AFP.

The man, a Finnish citizen, was also carrying a gun, police said on Twitter.

The suspected attacker, who was detained, was also injured in the attack in the town of Kuopio, police said.

Eyewitness reports in Finnish media said the suspected assailant burst into a classroom in Savo Vocational College on Tuesday morning.

"He hit a girl in the neck with a sword and stabbed her in the stomach," an unnamed eyewitness told Keskisuomalainen newspaper. The attacker also set off "some sort of small firebombs", the eyewitness said.

Another eyewitness, Roosa Kokkonen, who works in a car garage opposite the college, told Finnish tv channel MTV that a teacher with blood running from her hand came fleeing out of the building.

"While I was helping the teacher, I started hearing other shouts for help. Students were running away and into my garage," Kokkonen told MTV News.

She also told Finnish news agency STT that students described the weapon as "a long sword", and that he "started swinging the sword around in the class".

Police have yet to confirm a motive for the attack, or whether the suspect is a student at the college.

"Officers used firearms during the situation. Police have detained one perpetrator. The injured have been evacuated," East Finland police said in a statement.

A police spokesperson told AFP that two of the 10 injured remained in a serious condition.