Russian teenager shooting kills classmate, wounds several others

A 14-year-old girl shot a fellow pupil dead and wounded five other children before killing herself at a school in the Russian city of Bryansk, officials announced.

"According to preliminary investigation data, a 14-year-old girl brought a pump-action shotgun to school, from which she fired shots at her classmates," Russia's Investigative Committee said in a statement on Thursday.

Investigators were working to establish the motive, the statement said.

Regional governor Alexander Bogomaz called it a "terrible tragedy".

He said the five people wounded were all children with mild or moderate injuries.

Authorities work to uncover weapon source

The news outlet Mash published what it said was a photograph of the dead shooter, sprawled on the floor and dressed all in black. It said she was also armed with a hunting knife.

The photo appeared to show a long-handled knife tucked into her right boot.

Guns are normally tightly controlled in Russia, but Bryansk is one of several southern regions that have seen cross-border attacks in the course of the war with Ukraine, and where Moscow has encouraged the formation of self-defence units.

"Together with law enforcement agencies, we are determining the circumstances under which the student was able to obtain and bring a weapon to school," Bogomaz said.

Tragedies in Russian schools

Russia has seen several school shootings in recent years.

In 2018, an 18-year-old student killed 20 people, mostly fellow pupils, in a mass shooting at a college in Russian-occupied Crimea, which Moscow seized from Ukraine in 2014.

In September last year, a gunman with a swastika on his tee-shirt killed 15 people, including 11 children, and wounded 24 at a school in Izhevsk where he had once been a pupil, and then committed suicide, investigators said.