Neo-Nazi ex-pupil Artem Kazantsev kills 15 in brutal Russian school attack

A gunman with a swastika on his T-shirt has killed 15 people, including 11 children, and wounded 24 at a school in Russia before taking his own life, investigators say.

The attacker, a man in his early thirties who was named by authorities as Artem Kazantsev, killed two security guards and then opened fire on students and teachers at School Number 88 in Izhevsk, where he had once been a pupil.

Russia’s Investigative Committee, which handles major crimes, said it was looking into the perpetrator’s suspected neo-Nazi links.

“Currently investigators... are conducting a search of his residence and studying the personality of the attacker, his views and surrounding milieu,” the committee said in a statement.

“Checks are being made into his adherence to neo-fascist views and Nazi ideology.”

Investigators released a video showing the man’s body lying in a classroom with overturned furniture and papers strewn on the bloodstained floor.

He was dressed all in black, with a red swastika in a circle drawn on his T-shirt.

The Investigative Committee said that of the 24 people wounded, all but two were children.

Regional governor Alexander Brechalov said the attacker had been registered with a “psycho-neurological” treatment facility.

Investigators said the man was armed with two pistols and a large supply of ammunition.

Kremlin spokesman Dmitry Peskov said President Vladimir Putin “deeply mourns” the deaths.

He described the incident as “a terrorist act by a person who apparently belongs to a neo-fascist organisation or group”.

He said doctors, psychologists and neurosurgeons had been sent on Putin’s orders to the location of the shooting in Izhevsk, about 970km east of Moscow.

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