A gunman emblazoned with a Nazi Swastika opened fire on a classroom full of Russian children in a Columbine-inspired school shooting.
At least 15 people, including 11 children, were killed in a mass school shooting in central Russia on Monday local time.
Another 24 people were injured in the attack; the latest in a series of school shootings that have shaken Russia in recent years.
It came with the country on edge over efforts to mobilise tens of thousands of men to fight in Ukraine.
The Kremlin said that the shooter “apparently belongs to a Neo-Fascist group”, with investigators saying he wore “a black top with Nazi symbols and a balaclava”.
He was later identified as a local man Artem Kazantsev, born in 1988, who graduated from the school.
Investigators have said two security guards and two teachers were among the victims, while the attacker “committed suicide”.
Investigators said they were searching his home and probing his “adherence to Neo-Fascist views and Nazi ideology”.
“Currently investigators … are conducting a search of his residence and studying the personality of the attacker, his views and surrounding milieu,” Russia’s Investigative Committee said in a statement. “Checks are being made into his adherence to Neo-Fascist views and Nazi ideology.”
Read the article by Hayley Goddard, Merryn Johns and Justin Vallejo in the Herald Sun.