Seven children were killed when a fellow pupil 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.
He later identified the woman as the principal of the school in Tuusula municipality, a town of 35,000 some 60 km (40 miles) 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.
The YouTube video, entitled "Jokela High School Massacre - 11/7/2007", was posted by a user called Sturmgeist89. Hours after the shooting, the user's account was suspended. The school serves some 500 middle and high school students. Finnish Prime Minister Matti Vanhanen told reporters the shooting was an "extremely sad event".
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