Student kills nine in Finnish school shooting

By Attila Cser

KAUHAJOKI, Finland (Reuters) - A student shot and killed nine people at a vocational school in western Finland on Tuesday before turning the gun on himself, in the country's second such attack in less than a year.

The gunman, identified by a local government official as student Matti Juhani Saari, 22, died later of a head wound in Tampere University Hospital, the hospital's medical director told Reuters.

In an echo of last year's deadly shooting at Finland's Jokela high school, Saari posted menacing videos of himself wielding a gun on the Internet in the run-up to the attack.

"A cold-blooded shooter entered the building with an automatic pistol and started cutting down students," said Jukka Forsberg, a maintenance man at the school in the town of Kauhajoki where the shooting occurred.

"He also shot toward me, did not say anything and once the bullets started to whizz by I started running for my life."

Many of the students at the post-secondary school, which teaches catering and tourism studies, are around 20 years old.

Interior Minister Anne Holmlund told a news conference that police were in contact with Saari a day before the shooting.

She said they had been alerted to footage posted on the Web showing him firing a handgun at a shooting range, but were unable to get in touch with him immediately.