At least eight students were killed and 24 injured when a gunman opened fire Monday on the campus of Perm State University in central Russia, Aljazeera reported.
This is the country’s second mass shooting this year to target students.
Video on social media showed students throwing belongings from the windows of university buildings at Perm, around 1,300 kilometres east of Moscow, before jumping to flee the shooter.
The suspect was detained shortly after launching the attack on Monday morning.
Russia’s Investigative Committee said the shooter had been identified as a student at the university. It has opened a murder probe into the incident.
Students built barricades out of chairs to stop the shooter from entering their classrooms, they said.
“There were about 60 people in the classroom. We closed the door and barricaded it with chairs,” student Semyon Karyakin told Reuters.
The university, which has 12,000 students enrolled, said about 3,000 people were on the campus at the time of the shooting. It had urged those who could leave the campus to do so.
On May 11 this year, a teenager in Kazan killed seven children and two teachers at a school, prompting President Vladimir Putin to tighten gun law ownership.