A shooting at a vocational college in Siverek, Turkey, left 16 people injured – mostly students – after a former pupil stormed into a vocational training centre in the south-east of the country armed with a shotgun. After security forces surrounded the building, the attacker died when he shot himself with his own weapon, according to local authorities.
The incident occurred this morning at the Ahmet Koyuncu Anatolian Vocational and Technical High School, located in the Hasan Çelebi neighbourhood of the Siverek district, in the Turkish province of Şanlıurfa. An armed young man stormed the building and began firing indiscriminately at teachers and students, prompting a large-scale operation involving medical staff and special units from the police and gendarmerie in the area where the armed attack took place.
A witness to the incident explained that the attacker, aged between 18 and 19, began shootout with a long-barrelled weapon in the school playground before entering the building and continuing the attack. The governor of Şanlıurfa, Hasan Şıldak, confirmed that 16 people were injured in the shotgun attack and noted that the perpetrator, a former pupil at the school, took his own life following the shooting, according to the news website Haber Türk.
Security forces evacuated numerous students and teachers amidst scenes of great tension and panic. “He was 17 or 18 years old. As soon as he walked through the main door, he pulled out his long-barrelled gun. He started firing left and right and towards the school. Then he entered the building and kept shooting. I heard the students screaming as he shot at anyone he came across. Then the police arrived,” said an eyewitness.
The 19-year-old perpetrator had warned of the attack on his social media
Some images circulated by the Turkish press of the shooting in Siverek show the attacker, who has now been identified, walking through the corridors with a rifle, loading it and opening fire, whilst pupils tried to protect themselves by locking themselves in classrooms.
The Ministry of the Interior reported in a statement that the 16 injured include 10 students, 4 teachers, 1 police officer and 1 school canteen worker. The mayor of Siverek told local media that the school where the incident took place is a school with good students that had never experienced violent incidents before: “There had been no security issues before. It is a school located opposite the district gendarmerie,” he said. “Two of our teachers are in a critical condition. In total, there are three people whose lives are in danger. There are also children who jumped from the windows on the upper floor. The rest of the injured are not in a life-threatening condition,” he added.
The perpetrator of the attack in Siverek has been identified as Ömer Ket, born in 2007 and aged 19; local media reported that, before carrying out his plan, the attacker had posted a message on Instagram warning: “Get ready, there will be an attack at this school in a few days; get ready, beavers.” For now, the public prosecutor’s office has launched an investigation into this attack at a school in Turkey.
Gun violence, a growing problem in Turkey
Shootings at secondary schools and other educational establishments in Türkiye are rare, although there are precedents such as the 2018 attack at the University of Eskişehir, in the north-west of the country, where a staff member with mental health issues opened fire, killing four people and leaving several injured.
In Turkey, firearms control laws require licences to carry and possess weapons and take into account medical reports and criminal records; however, various reports in recent years have warned of the proliferation of illegal weapons, which, combined with their use in traditions in certain parts of the country, such as firing into the air during weddings, ends up causing hundreds of casualties a year.
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Edited and reviewed by:
Pablo Gómez is a specialist in Turkey and has been editor-in-chief of Hispanatolia since 2011. He has been analysing current affairs and geopolitics in Turkey and the surrounding region since 2006.
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