'Many may be dead' in Finland shooting

A pupil with a gun opened fire at a Finnish school today, the second such incident in less than a year.

There are reports that police say many may already have been killed in the incident.

Around 200 pupils at the trade school in Kauhajoki, western Finland were evacuated.

In November last year a Finnish high school student killed eight people before killing himself.

That incident at Jokela, 35 miles from Helsinki, triggered a series of threats against schools in Finland and its Nordic neighbours.

The killer, 18-year-old Pekka-Eric Auvinen, was a social outcast who was bullied.

He chose his victims at random after posting plans for the attack with a legally-owned .22 automatic pistol on YouTube. The dead included the school’s headmistress and nurse.

The incident led to a re-assessment of Finland’s laws on gun ownership. The country was unaccustomed to deadly shootings although it has a high rate of gun ownership.