Crowds gathered for the funerals of eight children and a teacher in southern Turkey on Thursday, killed when a 14-year-old opened fire at a school, in a crime that has plunged the country into shock and the community into grief, Agence France-Presse reported.
As family members and mourners gathered around coffins draped with the Turkish flag in the province of Kahramanmaraş, people also placed roses on the steps of the school that was attacked, with locals still reeling at what unfolded a day earlier when a teenage attacker arrived at the building with five guns and opened fire.
“We have tremendous pain,” said Vezir Yücel, whose son played football in the same academy as 10-year-old Bayram Nabi Şişik, one of the students killed at school on Wednesday.
“He was such a good kid, respectful and very hardworking,” he told Agence France-Presse outside the mosque after the funerals. His 11-year-old son Yusuf, standing next to him, was shaking and crying.
Authorities said nine people died in Wednesday’s attack, eight children aged 10 and 11 and their teacher, a day after an ex-student opened fire in his former high school in the southeastern province of Şanlıurfa, leaving 16 injured.
The suspects in both cases were also killed, authorities said, with the first attacker taking his own life when cornered by police.
“I feel terrible. In front of my eyes, so many children were jumping, coming out injured, covered in blood,” said one woman who lives near the school attacked on Wednesday, telling AFP she had followed what happened from her balcony.
Another local who gave his name as Ahmet, 16, said his sister knew the attacker as she went to the same school with him, though she hadn’t been in class on Wednesday.
“Allah protected her. But she’s shocked,” he said. “She knows the shooter.”
Some 3,500 teachers gathered in Ankara to call for the education minister to quit, some shouting, “Blood has stained my profession” and others chanting, “Where were you while the children were dying?”
In the build-up to the funerals, police arrested dozens of web users for praising the shooters or spreading misinformation and blocked hundreds of social media accounts.
Mass shootings are rare in Turkey, and the incidents provoked shock across the country, with those living in Kahramanmaraş still shaken on Thursday.
“Children jumped out of the window and came out injured,” an eyewitness who lives near school told AFP.
“After that, I couldn’t look anymore. I didn’t send my children to school that day,” said the woman, who did not want to be identified.
Schools will remain closed in Kahramanmaraş on Thursday and Friday.
‘Isolated act’
Police said the 14-year-old attacker had referenced a mass shooter in the United States in a photo on his WhatsApp profile.
“Initial findings from the investigation revealed that the perpetrator used an image on his WhatsApp profile referencing Elliot Rodger, who carried out an attack in the United States in 2014,” the police said in a statement.
Rodger killed six people on the campus of the University of California, Santa Barbara, before taking his own life.
According to initial findings, no link to terrorism has been established in Wednesday’s shooting, both the police and the prosecutors said.
“This appears to be an isolated act,” the police added.
President Recep Tayyip Erdoğan expressed sorrow over Wednesday’s “tragic attack” and said the incident would be fully investigated.
