Czech police up patrols in public areas, universities after shooting

Czech police tightened security around schools and other public buildings across the country and Prague's Charles University cancelled all lectures and events on Friday.

Czech police tightened security around schools and other public buildings across the country and Prague’s Charles University cancelled all lectures and events on Friday after a student shooter killed 13 people at a university building on Thursday.

The shooting was the worst-ever such event in the central European country where many hold guns, some of them sports or hunting rifles, but multiple shootings are rare.

Interior Minister Vit Rakusan said police have identified the dead and that no foreigners were among them. The wounded included two United Arab Emirates citizens and one from the Netherlands.

“There are 13 victims of the crazed gunman and one of the dead is the gunman himself,” Rakusan told Czech Television. Authorities had previously reported 14 victims at the university.

People were lighting candles outside the university’s medieval downtown headquarters since Thursday evening, and leaders of the nation’s universities planned to pay respects there later on Friday morning.

“Starting today we have adopted countrywide preventative measures in relation to soft targets and schools,” police said on social network X, previously known as Twitter.

“We do not have information about any concrete threat… this is a signal we are here and prepared.”

The authorities provided no fresh information on the condition of those wounded in the attack.