Finnish youth's shooting rampage leaves eight dead

An 18-year-old Finnish youth died in hospital last night hours after shooting dead seven of his schoolmates and his head teacher. Earlier, he had announced the bloodbath with a posting on the internet site YouTube.

The shootings, in the municipality of Tuusula, 30km north of Helsinki, have shocked Finland. Despite having the world's third highest per capita gun ownership, there is a low rate of gun crime, and school shootings were unknown until yesterday.

Students at the Jokela secondary school reported that the gunman stood up in the middle of morning classes and fatally shot five male students and two female.

The death toll was expected to rise since many other students were badly wounded. Police put the number of injured at at least 12.

Local resident Anna-Liisa Vainio, who entered the school in the morning to meet her daughter's teacher, said she thought she was witnessing a school drill.

"I saw four students lying on the ground, then I saw the gunman with the weapon in his hand," she told Finnish television.

Pupils fled the scene and police surrounded the school building by midday local time. The gunman reportedly shot at the policemen from the school before being overpowered.

President Tarja Halonen expressed her sympathy to the families of the dead, while prime minister Matti Vanhanen described the shootings as "extremely tragic".

He headed an emergency cabinet meeting as details of the gunman's internet postings became public. In a series of photographs on YouTube, the self-described "social Darwinist" posed with a gun in front of his school wearing a T-shirt bearing the slogan "Humanity is Overrated".

Early that morning, he uploaded to the internet a 1,000-page document entitled Manifesto of a Natural Selector, with the motto: "To each what they deserve!"

The YouTube video depicted a building resembling the school bursting apart to reveal the killer pointing his gun. Other material posted on the internet, and removed yesterday following the murders, showed a gunman shooting at an apple in a forest.

"I cannot say that I am of the same race as this miserable, arrogant and selfish human race," he wrote in the document. "No! I have evolved a step higher!"

Fellow students said the gunman had been acting unusually in recent days, repeatedly drawing pictures of firearms.

"It's pretty hard to digest this situation when a guy you know does something like this," said Tuomas Hulkkonen, a schoolmate of the gunman, to the Helsingin Sanomat newspaper.

The 480 students of the two schools in the complex were evacuated to nearby schools and police set up a crisis centre for parents.

"This is a peaceful place. Nothing like this has ever happened here and will never happen again," said the mayor of Tuusula, Hannu Joensivu.

A pupil, Terhi Vayrynen (17) told the Associated Press that her brother Henri (13) witnessed the killing of the headteacher. The girl said the gunman came into Henri's class shouting: "Revolution. Smash everything!" He shot at a television and windows, but not at pupils and ran off down the corridor.

Police said the killer's gun was legally owned, but he had obtained a licence only three weeks ago.

Finland has the most heavily armed civilian population in Europe, and is third worldwide, after the US and Yemen.