Seven students, principal killed in Finland school shootout

Seven children were killed when a fellow student opened fire at a school in southern Finland on Wednesday.

Seven children were killed when a fellow student opened fire at a school in southern Finland on Wednesday, hours after a video was posted on YouTube predicting a massacre there.

The school principal also died. The gunman, who had walked through Jokela High School firing into classroom after classroom with a .22-caliber handgun, is in hospital after wounding himself in the head.

“Five boys, two girls and one adult woman were killed,” police chief Matti Tohkanen told a news conference.

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He later identified the woman as the principal of the school in Tuusula municipality, a town of 35,000 some 60 km from Helsinki.

The YouTube video, set to a hard-driving song called Stray Bullet, shows a still photo of a low building that appears to be Jokela High School. The photo breaks apart to reveal a red-tinted picture of a man pointing a handgun at the camera.

“He (the gunman) was moving systematically through the school hallways, knocking on the doors and shooting through the doors,” said Kim Kiuru, who was teaching a grade 8 class when the shooting began.

Police said the gun used in the massacre was legal and registered to the gunman on October 19.

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The YouTube video, entitled “Jokela High School Massacre – 11/7/2007”, was posted by a user called Sturmgeist89. “I am prepared to fight and die for my cause,” read a posting by a user of the same name. “I, as a natural selector, will eliminate all who I see unfit, disgraces of human race and failures of natural selection.” “Sturmgeist” means storm spirit in German.