The Czech Republic mourned on Friday after the worst shooting in the country's modern history, which left 13 people dead at a university in Prague.
• Also read: Shooting in Prague leaves 14 dead, attacker found dead
A 24-year-old student shot 13 people and injured 25 others at Charles University's Faculty of Arts. The attacker died in an exchange of fire with security forces.
Police identified 13 dead and continued searching the crime scene, Interior Minister Vit Rakusan said on radio on Friday.
He said three of the injured were foreigners.
The head of Dutch diplomacy had previously indicated that one of the injured was a national of his country.
All of the victims were killed in the building, some of them were classmates of the killer.
While police said there was no longer any danger, they decided to continue monitoring several vulnerable locations, including schools, on Friday.
Police Chief Martin Vondrasek said earlier that the gunman, who was unknown to authorities, had a “huge arsenal of weapons and ammunition” and that quick police action prevented further carnage.
On December 23, the government declared a national day of mourning and the population was invited to observe a minute's silence at midday.
Vondrasek said police had begun searching for the student before the shooting because his father was found dead in the village of Hostoun, west of Prague.
The gunman “traveled to Prague and said he wanted to kill himself,” he said, declining to confirm whether the gunman actually killed his father.
Police searched a Faculty of Arts building where the shooter was supposed to report for a class, but eventually went to the faculty's main building nearby.
The faculty is located in the historic center of Prague, close to important attractions such as the 14th-century Charles Bridge and the picturesque Old Town Square.
Another murder
Police learned of the shooting at around 2:00 p.m. GMT and immediately dispatched a task force.
Twenty minutes later, the shooter was found dead.
Citing social media research, Vondrasek said the shooter was inspired by a “similar case in Russia,” without elaborating.
Vondrasek said police suspected the same gunman of killing a young man and his 2-month-old daughter in a stroller while walking in a forest in Prague's eastern suburbs on Dec. 15.
The investigation into this murder remained at a dead end until evidence was found in Hostoun that linked the shooter to this crime.
After the attack, support came from local and international politicians.
“Nothing can justify this terrible act,” said Czech Prime Minister Petr Fiala, expressing his condolences to the bereaved families.
A senseless act
United States President Joe Biden expressed his condolences and condemned a “senseless” shooting.
French President Emmanuel Macron, EU chief Ursula von der Leyen and Ukrainian President Volodymyr Zelensky expressed their condolences.
According to Mr. Rakusan, there was no connection between the shooting and “international terrorism” and the student acted alone.
In 2015, a 63-year-old man shot seven men and a woman before committing suicide at a restaurant in the southeastern town of Uhersky Brod. In 2019, a man killed six people in a hospital waiting room in the eastern city of Ostrava, and another woman died days later. The murderer then committed suicide.