Prague shaken as Czechs mourn victims of deadliest shooting

By Peter Laca, Deana Kjuka and Andrea Dudik

The Czech Republic declared Saturday a national day of mourning after the worst shooting in the country’s history left at least 15 people dead at Prague’s Charles University.

Officials said there was no evidence that the shooter, a 24-year-old student who also died during the rampage, had links to international terrorism. The carnage in the heart of Prague’s historic center on Thursday lasted about 20 minutes and left the country of 11 million shaken.

“We are all shocked by this horrific act,” Prime Minister Petr Fiala said after an emergency meeting of his cabinet. “It’s hard to find words to express condemnation but also pain and grief that the entire society is feeling.” Church bells will ring across the country at noon on Dec. 23 to honor the victims.

Leaders across the nation’s political spectrum and around the world offered their condolences. German Chancellor Olaf Scholz said he was “deeply shocked” by the attack. The White House said President Joe Biden was “praying for the families who lost loved ones and everyone else who has been affected by the senseless act of violence.”

Several guns and a large amount of ammunition were found in the building hosting the Faculty of Arts, and only a quick police reaction prevented dozens more fatalities, Interior Minister Vit Rakusan said.

The shooter legally owned several weapons, according to Martin Vondrasek, the police chief. Earlier in the day, authorities found the killer’s father dead in a village near Prague. They also got information that he had left for the capital intending to kill himself, he said.

The assailant either killed himself or died when police returned fire, Vondrasek said. The police are investigating a possibility that he was also involved in an unrelated double murder outside Prague last week.

Czech Education Minister Mikulas Bek, who studied at the department, placed a candle at Charles University’s main building in sympathy for the victims.Czech officials didn’t immediately suggest a motive for the shooting — a rare event in a country that limits access to firearms by requiring gun owners to pass written and practical tests as well as psychological screenings.

“It’s an unimaginable tragedy,” Rakusan said. “The atmosphere of pre-Christmas Czech Republic has been changed, by an act of one insane shooter, into something unrecognizable.”

Czech officials didn’t immediately suggest a motive for the shooting — a rare event in a country that limits access to firearms by requiring gun owners to pass written and practical tests as well as psychological screenings.

“It’s an unimaginable tragedy,” Rakusan said. “The atmosphere of pre-Christmas Czech Republic has been changed, by an act of one insane shooter, into something unrecognizable.”

Students locked themselves in classrooms or ran out of the building with their hands over their heads after shots rang out, Czech television reported. TV footage showed people trying to hide by standing on the ledge of the building. Some found shelter in the nearby seat of the Prague Philharmonic. Overall, 25 people were wounded, including 10 seriously.

Dozens of police cars and police officers, including some with machine guns, cordoned off an area around the scene, which is in the heart of Prague’s famed center. The police scheduled a news briefing for 11 a.m. in Prague on Friday.

The university department where the shooting occurred is in a limestone building on Jan Palach Square, with a view of the Prague Castle across the Vltava river.

Founded in 1348, the Charles University is one of the world’s oldest. Prague, the Czech capital that was once behind the Iron Curtain, attracts millions of tourists every year.