Austria school shooting updates: Ten dead, including suspect

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For more updates about the shooting, follow our news story here.

And here’s an explainer, setting out all we know about the incident here.

We will be closing this live page soon. Here is a recap of the main events:

• At least 10 people are reported dead after a shooting at a high school in Graz, Austria’s second most populous city, according to police.
• The suspect is among the dead, police say. The situation is “secured” and there is no longer any danger, they add.
• Police believe there was one perpetrator but have given no information on the suspect or motive. According to local media, the attacker was a 22-year-old former student.
• Chancellor Christian Stocker says the shooting “is a national tragedy that deeply shocks our whole country”.

German Chancellor Friedrich Merz has offered his condolences, calling the school shooting “horrific”.

“Horrific news from Graz. Our thoughts are with our Austrian friends and neighbours and we mourn with them,” Merz said in a post on X.

Austria has one of the most heavily armed civilian populations in Europe with an estimated 30 firearms per 100 people, according to the Small Arms Survey, an independent research project.

Machineguns and pump action guns are banned while revolvers, pistols and semiautomatic weapons are allowed with official authorisation.

Rifles and shotguns are permitted with a firearms licence or a valid hunting licence or for members of traditional shooting clubs.

Italian Prime Minister Giorgia Meloni has offered condolences to the victims’ families.

“It is with sadness that I learned of the tragic news involving a school in Graz, Austria, where a student killed several people and injured others, some of them seriously,” she posted on X.

“My closeness and that of the entire Italian Government goes to the families of the victims, together with a thought that I wish to extend to the injured and their loved ones.”

We are expecting the number of those killed to increase as the mayor has said 10 people have been killed.

We are still waiting to get more confirmation about what happened.

People are saying this is one of the worst mass shootings in Austria. Chancellor Christian Stocker has cancelled all his appointments, and he is on his way to Graz.

The reports we are getting is that the perpetrator was a 22-year-old former student of the same school. He managed to get into the building and open fire on students in two classrooms before it was confirmed by the police he killed himself.

While school attacks are rare in Europe, they are not unheard of. Some of the recent assaults include:

• In January 2025, an 18-year-old fatally stabbed a high school student and a teacher at a school in northeastern Slovakia.
• A 19-year-old man stabbed a seven-year-old child to death and injured several others in December 2024 at a primary school in Zagreb, Croatia.
• In December 2023, an attack by a university student in Prague killed 14 people and injured 25.
• Earlier in 2023, a 13-year-old shot eight classmates and a security guard at an elementary school in downtown Belgrade. Six children and a teacher were injured. The shooter contacted the police, who arrested him.

Let’s get you up to speed:

• Special forces are sent to the BORG Dreierschutzengasse high school, about 1km (0.6 miles) from Graz’s historic centre, after a call at 10am.
• At 11:30am, police post on X that the school was evacuated and everyone was taken to a safe meeting point. They write that the situation is “secured” and there is no danger.
• At least 10 people have now been reported dead in Austria’s second most populated city of Graz, according to Mayor Elke Kahr, Austrian news agency reports.
• The suspect is among the dead, Kahr says.
• Police also say there was only one perpetrator, but give no information on the suspect or their motives.
• Chancellor Christian Stocker says the shooting “is a national tragedy that deeply shocks our whole country”.

Ursula von der Leyen has expressed sorrow and offered condolences to the families of the victims of the school shooting.

“Schools are symbols for youth, hope and the future,” she wrote on X. “It is hard to bear when schools become places of death and violence.”

Alexander Van der Bellen says, “This horror cannot be captured in words.”

“These were young people who had their whole lives ahead of them. A teacher who accompanied them on their way,” he noted.

Interior Minister Gerhard Karner is understood to be travelling to Graz.

Christian Stocker says the shooting “is a national tragedy that deeply shocks our whole country”.

“There are no words for the pain and grief that all of us – the whole of Austria – feel now,” he said in a statement posted on X.

An EU spokesperson in Brussels says while “we seek clarity”, the bloc offers its deepest condolences to the families of the victims “and the entire city of Graz”.

We are on our way now to the city of Graz. The latest developments from the authorities there are that the operation is over, and they have deployed special forces to the area.

Ambulances were deployed there as well. They are providing assistance to the families of those killed and injured.

They will be trying to figure out what exactly happened and what the motives of the perpetrator were.

If you look at the rate of mass shootings in Austria compared with other Western European nations such as Germany and France, the number is very, very small.

Austrian police said in a post on X that they are working on the assumption that there is a sole suspect in the deadly shooting.

Attacks in public are rare in the Western European nation of almost 9.2 million people.

In a post on X, police say the school has been evacuated, and everyone has been taken to a safe meeting point.

They wrote that the situation was “secured” and there was no longer any danger.

Police said the shots were fired at the secondary school at about 10am (08:00 GMT), with special units quickly responding to the scene.