Washington
The death toll in a slaying rampage at a US university campus Monday
has gone up to 33, after an unknown shooter killed at least 32
people before killing himself.
Students at the Virginia Polytechnic Institute described their panic
and fear as they tried to flee two rounds of shootings, which began
in a student dorm at 7:15 a.m. (local time) and ended two and a half
hours later in a classroom building.
Police and university officials emphasised that it was not clear if
the two incidents were connected, and came under fire during a press
conference for not adequately informing the campus about the first
shooting before the second took place.
Fifteen people were also injured and were being treated in local
hospitals, university president Charles Steger said. It was not
known how many of the dead were students or professors on the
Blacksburg, Virginia campus.
"Schools should be places of safety and sanctuary and learning,"
said US President George W. Bush in a message of condolence to
parents and the campus. "When that sanctuary is violated, the impact
is felt in every American classroom and every American community."
The university will hold a special service Tuesday "to begin the
healing process". Virginia Governor Tim Kaine has interrupted a
visit to Japan to rush back for the service.
Police were investigating the scene of the first shootings, at the
residence of West Ambler Johnston Hall, where two people were dead,
when they received news of a second and more gruesome round of
killings at the classroom building, Norris Hall.
At Norris Hall, in the second incident, a gunman went from one
classroom to another, said university Police Chief Wendell Flinchum.
Some outside doors to the classroom building were chained shut from
the inside, he confirmed.
The campus, 740 km southwest of the nation's capital, draws about
26,000 undergraduate and graduate students, including about 10
percent international students. Only about 9,000 students live on
campus.
The massacre is being called the worst campus shooting in US
history, and was more gruesome than the 2002 school shooting in
Erfurt, Germany, where 17 died; the 1999 Columbine High School
massacre in Colorado that took 15 lives; and the 1996 school
slaughter of 16 children, aged five and six, in Dunblane, Scotland.
In 2005, terrorists seized a school in Beslan, Russia. When police
stormed the building in a massive fire-fight, 333 hostages and
policemen, including 186 school children and all but one of the
terrorists, died.
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