A TRAINEE chef who yesterday killed 10 people in a college in western Finland had been interviewed by police as recently as Monday over internet postings of himself firing a gun at a shooting range. He was later released by police because he had a permit for the weapon, issued to him last month.
The man used a .22 Walther automatic pistol similar to the one featured in his video in the attack yesterday in Kauhajoki, 290km (180 miles) from Helsinki.
Following the shooting spree the 22-year-old gunman, who was named by local media as Matti Juhani Saari, then fatally shot himself. He died later in hospital of wounds to the head.
The shootings revived memories of a similar gun attack carried out last year by a student at Jokela high school in Tuusula, Finland, in which nine people, including the gunman, were killed.
Finland ranks third after the US and Yemen in gun ownership rates, according to a study last year by the Geneva-based Graduate Institute of International Studies, but crime rates are very low.
Saari, who entered the college dressed in black and wearing a ski mask, walked into a crowded exam room before opening fire on students and teachers.
Eyewitnesses at the post-secondary school, which teaches catering and tourism, described panic as Saari began to shoot: "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.
"He also shot toward me . . . [He] did not say anything and once the bullets started to whizz by I started running for my life."
Finnish prime minister Matti Vanhanen, who called an emergency cabinet meeting to discuss the killings, said this was a "tragic day" for Finland.
Mr Vanhanen said Finland should consider banning private handguns altogether, saying a new stricter European-wide gun law was not enough.
"It is not enough to talk about age limits or interviews . . . after two such tragic incidents, we have to discuss whether private people can be allowed to have handguns," he told Finnish broadcaster MTV3.
The killer posted YouTube clips showing a young man wearing a leather jacket firing several shots in rapid succession with a handgun at what appeared to be a shooting range.
The posting was made five days before the shooting and the location was given as Kauhajoki - the same town as yesterday's shooting.
It included a message saying: "Whole life is war and whole life is pain. And you will fight alone in your personal war."
The person who posted the clip identified himself as a 22 year old with the name "Mr Saari". - ( Additional reporting: AP/Reuters)