Death toll in Prague university shooting at 14, with 25 wounded

The death toll in the shooting at the Prague Charles University rose to over 14, Czech Republic’s police chief said Thursday.

“More than 14 people have lost their lives and at least 25 have been wounded,” police chief Martin Vondrasek told reporters following the shooting, which happened in the city’s historic center.

The shooting at a university in central Prague that killed more than 14 people was not linked to international terrorism, the Czech government said.

“There is no indication that this crime has any link to international terrorism,” Interior Minister Vit Rakusan told reporters of the shooting at Charles University.

The violence in the city’s historic center sparked frantic evacuations, a massive response by heavily armed police and warnings for people to stay indoors.

The shooting erupted at the Charles University’s Faculty of Arts, which sits near major tourist sites like the 14th-century Charles Bridge.

Thursday’s shooting was the worst since the Czech Republic emerged as an independent state in 1993.

Czech President Petr Pavel said he was “shocked” by the violence and expressed “deep regret and sincere condolences to the families and relatives of the victims.”

European Commission president Ursula von der Leyen said she was “shocked by the senseless violence of the shooting that claimed several lives today.”

Prague’s emergency service said on X that “a large number of ambulance units” were deployed at the faculty, adding the injuries ranged from light to very serious.

The private Nova TV reported a blast and a gunman on the roof of the building in Prague’s historic center.

Interior Minister Vit Rakusan said “no other gunman has been confirmed” and called on people to follow police instructions.

Police closed the area and asked people living nearby to stay at home.

Though mass gun violence is unusual in the Czech Republic, the nation has been rocked by some instances in recent years.

A 63-year-old man shot seven men and a woman dead in 2015 before killing himself in a restaurant in the southeastern town of Uhersky Brod.

A man killed six people in the waiting room of a hospital in the eastern city of Ostrava in 2019, with another woman dying days later. The man shot himself dead about three hours after the attack.