TUUSULA, Finland (AFP) — Normally tranquil Finland was struggling to comprehend Thursday why a teenage gunman massacred eight people at a school in what he claimed was an attack on "humanity".
Flags flew at half mast across the Nordic country a day after 18-year-old Pekka-Eric Auvinen went on his shooting spree at Jokela High School in Tuusula -- a small, picturesque town of just 30,000 inhabitants on the banks of a lake north of Helsinki.
Auvinen, a broad-shouldered, blond-haired youth described by police as "a lonely person with a strong anger against society and radical thoughts," walked through the school late Wednesday morning, peppering hallways and classrooms with 69 bullets.
When his 20-minute shooting rampage was over, five boys aged between 16 and 18, the 61-year-old headmistress, a 42-year-old female nurse and a 25-year-old single mother taking an adult training class at the school were dead, all of them with multiple gun shot wounds to the head and upper body.
The twelve people injured in the attack, most of them suffering cuts from broken window panes as they frantically jumped out of windows to escape the rain of bullets, had been released from hospital.
Police, who gave no details on the order in which the victims had been shot, said Auvinen had also tried to set a second floor corridor on fire using an unidentified inflammable liquid before shooting himself in the head in a bathroom near the school cafeteria.
Auvinen, who died of his wounds late Wednesday, was carrying 320 more bullets when he was found, according to police, who found no other weapons in his home.
"From the first indication we have, he shot randomly, but this kind of thing is under investigation still," police officer Jan Olof Nyholm told a press conference, adding that the gunman had carried out his deadly rampage alone.
Auvinen, described as an adherent of extreme philosophies on both the left and the right, had posted a notice on website YouTube before the attack detailing how he would carry out the massacre as well as a video entitled "Jokela High School Massacre -- 11/7/2007".
"I don't want this to be called only as 'school shooting'," he said of the massacre, which appears to have been planned to coincide with the anniversary of the Bolshevik revolution.
In the "attack information", he clearly detailed his intentions.
"Target: Jokela High School, students and faculty, society, humanity, human race ... Attack type: mass murder, political terrorism."
"Although I choosed (sic) the school as target, my motives for the attack are political and much, much deeper and therefore I don't want this to be called only as 'school shooting'," he added in the message which was rapidly removed from the sight after attack.
Several of the 18-year-old's classmates and teachers described a brilliant but complex loner obsessed with weapons, Internet war games and revolutionary history who was often bullied and tormented.
Students said the perpetrator of one of the worst tragedies in recent Finnish history had made no secret of his admiration for Hitler and Stalin and had been taking anti-depressant medications, something police refused to comment on.
Auvinen left a suicide note for his family that had been handed over to police.
"It was a kind of goodbye letter to the relatives," Nyholm said, adding that the boy's family had been placed under police protection because of threats.
The shooting sent shockwaves through Finland, which with its mere 5.3 million inhabitants and low crime rates, is unaccustomed to such violence.
"Tuusula will have lifelong scars," mayor Hannu Joensivu told the FNB news agency.
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