11 hurt as teen opens fire outside Türkiye school
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TURGUTLU, Türkiye: A teenager opened fire outside a high school in western Türkiye on Tuesday (Sep 22), wounding 11 people before being detained by police, a minister said.
The incident happened around 8am (1pm, Singapore time) in Turgutlu in Manisa province, near the western resort city of Izmir, the regional governor's office said.
Although such shootings are rare in Türkiye, there were two separate attacks by teenagers on consecutive days in April that shocked the nation, sparking deep concern about school security.
"Eleven students were injured, two of them seriously ... The minor who carried out the attack was quickly apprehended and taken into custody," Justice Minister Akin Gurlek wrote on X.
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He said the suspect's parents and grandfather had also been detained by investigators probing the attack, which saw police and rescuers rushing to the scene alongside panicked parents.
Speaking to IHA news agency, one local resident said they saw the gunman moments after the shooting, saying he appeared to be angry.
"Gunshots rang out. I immediately went out onto the balcony. He was swearing as he walked towards the side street. He was shouting," he said.
"He fired at people here with the gun he was carrying. We could not intervene because he had a rifle," another eyewitness told IHA, which did not name either of them.
CCTV FOOTAGE
DHA news agency broadcast CCTV footage of the alleged attacker, a young man wearing black jeans, a black jacket and a green top, walking along a street holding what appeared to be a long-barrelled gun.
IHA had a similar image of what appeared to be the same person with a gun, although this time running. NTV private television said it was a shotgun.
Footage from outside the school showed police wrestling a man in a white shirt to the ground before leading him away, as a woman screamed, with onlookers pressed against the school fence, filming with their mobile phones.
Authorities have opened an investigation into the incident, Gurlek said.
"How the weapon used in the attack ended up in the minor's hands, the conditions under which it was kept and supervised ... and allegations of bullying prior to the incident are all being investigated," he wrote on X.
The education ministry said all lessons were suspended for the day at the school.
SCHOOL SAFETY
The attack came five months after two back-to-back school shootings that raised public concerns about security in Turkish schools.
In April, a 14-year-old opened fire at a school in the southern province of Kahramanmaras, killing a teacher and nine students aged 10 and 11. The attacker died at the scene.
A day earlier, another teenager opened fire at his former high school in the southeastern province of Sanliurfa, wounding 16 people before taking his own life when confronted by police.
Following the attacks, President Recep Tayyip Erdogan pledged his government would introduce tighter gun controls and vowed school safety would be a top priority.
"When we look at similar attacks around the world, especially in the United States, we see one of the perpetrators' aims is to terrorise society," he said.
The shooting occurred a day after Education Minister Yusuf Tekin and Interior Minister Mustafa Ciftci introduced a raft of new security measures for the academic year, which began last week.
Ciftci said the ministry had deployed 31,000 school grounds supervisors and assigned police officers on permanent duty to first- and second-degree risk schools.
Schools classified as lower risk were assigned police liaison officers to work with the school administrators.
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