3 days ago
Austria mourns 10 victims of 'abominable' school shooting
GRAZ - Grieving Austrians held tearful memorials for the 10 people shot dead at a high school by a former pupil, an unprecedented attack in the Alpine nation.
Mourners cried, hugged and left flowers, candles and letters to the victims in churches and outside the school in Austria's second-largest city of Graz.
The government declared three days of mourning for the victims of Tuesday's shooting at the Dreierschuetzengasse secondary school, including a national moment of silence on Wednesday morning.
Church bells rang out across Austria as people stopped in the streets, radio and TV programmes were interrupted and public transport was halted.
A teacher and nine teenagers, including a Franco-Austrian and a Polish national, aged between 14 and 17, were among the victims, Austrian press agency APA reported.
Of the eleven people wounded, nine were still in intensive care but in a stable condition on Wednesday, according to hospital officials.
Hundreds of people also rushed to donate blood, responding to a call from the Red Cross.
At a memorial event on Wednesday, one student recalled the moment the children realised there was a shooter.
She said students were "running for their lives" as older children tried to protect the younger ones.
Police said the alleged perpetrator was an Austrian from the Graz region who used two legally owned weapons -- a shotgun and a pistol.
