Czech police said several people were killed and “dozens” of people were wounded in a shootout near a university in central Prague, according to the BBC and Reuters. For the time being, reports say there are at least 15 dead and 24 injured. The incident took place at Charles University’s Faculty of Arts, located in Jan Palach Square.
Prague emergency services said a total of 11 seriously injured, 8 moderately injured and another 5 lightly injured were treated.
Police said the attacker was “eliminated” and the building was evacuated. The attacker was a student at the Faculty of Arts of Charles University in Prague.
Photos of the attack appear on social networks. Several students hid on a ledge of the university, risking falling into the void, to escape the gunfire.
Authorities said the entire market and surrounding area was closed. “All of a sudden we heard gunshots,” a witness who said he was at the scene told Czech news station Mlada Fronta Dnes.
Czech Charles University told staff in an email to “stay put” and lock doors following a report of gunfire at one of its buildings in Prague. “Stay where you are, don’t go anywhere, if you are in offices, lock them and put the furniture in front of the door, turn off the lights,” said an email to staff at Charles University’s Faculty of Philosophy, seen by Reuters.
A journalist studying in Prague shared a photo of how students barricaded themselves as they waited to be evacuated.
“Currently stuck inside my classroom in Prague. Shooter is dead, but we are waiting to be evacuated. Praying to make it out alive. Locked the door before the shooter tried to open it. Fucking hell”, Jakob Weizman tweeted.
Charles University is located in the Old Town of Prague, about 500 meters from the historic Charles Bridge, a tourist magnet.
Bohuslav Svoboda, the mayor of Prague, says he is “shocked by what happened at the Faculty of Arts in Prague”.Following the gun attack in downtown Prague, Czech Prime Minister Petr Fiala has canceled his plans and is returning to the capital.
The worst armed attack in the last 30 years
BBC journalist Paul Kirby reviews the worst attacks in the Czech Republic in recent years. Today’s attack at Karolina University in Prague is said to be the deadliest armed attack since Czech independence 30 years ago.
The most recent gun attack took place in December 2019 at a hospital in Ostrava, when a man opened fire in the waiting room of a trauma clinic and killed four men and two women before killing himself.
In February 2015, a man opened fire in a restaurant in the eastern town of Uhersky Brod. Eight people died in the attack. Even though armed attacks are rare in the Czech Republic, hunting with firearms is popular.
In 2019, the Czech government unsuccessfully tried to overturn an EU ban on semi-automatic rifles for private use, introduced after a series of deadly jihadist attacks in Europe.