Prague grapples with worst mass shooting in Czech history

More than 15 people were killed in a shooting at a Prague university on Thursday, the police said, marking the country’s worst ever mass shooting.

Czech police said shortly after 3 p.m. that they were responding to the shooting at Charles University’s faculty of arts building in Jan Palach Square, before reporting the shooter had been “eliminated.”

The police said the shooter was a student at the faculty of arts at Charles University. Police said the father of the shooter was found dead earlier on Thursday.

“We always thought that this was a thing that did not concern us. Now it turns out that, unfortunately, our world is also changing and the problem of the individual shooter is emerging here as well,” Prague Mayor Bohuslav Svoboda told Czech Television.

Petr Nedoma, director of the Rudolfinum Gallery at a concert hall across Palach Square, told Czech TV he saw the shooter.

“I saw a young person on the gallery who had some weapon in his hand, like an automatic weapon, and shooting toward the Manes Bridge. Repeatedly, with some interruptions. Then I saw as he shot, put hands up and threw the weapon down on the street, it lay there on the pedestrian crossing,” he said.

Police sealed off the square and the area adjacent to the building, located in a busy part of town that has a popular street leading tourists to Old Town Square.

Czech Prime Minister Petr Fiala canceled his trip to the east of the country and was en route to Prague, he said on X, the site formerly known as Twitter.

Gun crime is relatively rare in the Czech Republic. In December 2019, a 42-year-old gunman killed six people at a hospital waiting room in the eastern Czech city of Ostrava before fleeing and fatally shooting himself, police said.

This story was reported by Reuters. It will be updated as more information becomes available.