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BRATISLAVA: A man armed with an assault rifle shot seven people dead, wounded 15 and then turned the gun on himself in a Monday morning rampage on a street in the Slovak capital Bratislava, the police said.
"A man in his fifties shot six people dead and eventually killed himself after the police cornered him as he tried to escape the crime scene," police commander Jaroslav Spisiak told reporters at the scene.
"The seventh victim, a 52-year old woman, didn't belong to the murdered family and was probably shot accidentally on her balcony when the gunman on the run started shooting into windows," Interior Minister Daniel Lipsic said later.
The shooting spree started shortly after 10:00 am (0800 GMT) in an apartment on a housing estate in Devinska Nova Ves, an otherwise quiet north-western district of the city.
"The police received an emergency call on a shooting in a flat. The first police officers arrived as the gunman was leaving the house," where he had killed four women and a man, Spisiak said.
Police declined to speculate on a motive for one of the worst such incidents in the country's history, but said six of the dead were all of the same family of Roma origin.
But a racial motive was unlikely, the interior minister said.
Marta Vozbranukova, a teacher from a kindergarten close to the scene, told AFP she had seen "an older man carrying an automatic gun walking towards a prefab house."
"After a while, an injured man of Roman origin, whose family lives in the house, ran out and fell on the ground where the gunman shot him two or three more times," Vozbranukova said.
Spisiak said the gunman then started to shoot "at everything that moved."
"More officers came, surrounded him, and he had no choice but to commit suicide," he added.
Lipsic said the woman shot on the balcony had probably retreated to her flat, where her husband found her dead as he came home from work.
As the gunfire started, local authorities, tipped off by the police, warned people through loudspeakers not to go out or near their windows.
"I saw a stray bullet that went through our window, door, hit the wall and ended on the floor," a woman in her fifties living in the area told TA3.
"Neither me nor my family were injured, we hid in a room with no windows as soon as we heard the warning from municipal loudspeakers," she added.
The SME daily quoted an unnamed source as saying the gunman had been a former soldier, and Lipsic said there might be a link between his past and the fact that the prefab housing is inhabited mostly by soldiers.
The daily also ran a picture taken by a witness from a balcony, showing a grey-haired man wearing a denim jacket and ear muffs, carrying an assault rifle and looking at the top storeys of the house.
"We will not comment on the gunman for now. He was about 50 years old. He was using an assault rifle, model 58, and two handguns," Spisiak said.
"He had eight full assault rifle magazines and several full handgun magazines," he added.
According to specialist websites the SA Vz.58 assault rifle magazine contains 30 rounds of ammunition.
As he ran away from the house the man fired at random, wounding at least 15 people, including a three-year-old child, who were taken to hospital, emergency services spokeswoman Dominika Sulkova told AFP.
"Thirteen people are in hospital at the moment, one of them is in a critical but stabilised condition, three are in a serious condition and nine are stabilised," Health Minister Ivan Uhliarik said.
Others on the scene were slightly hurt by flying glass, Sulkova said.
Lipsic told reporters a policeman had been hit in the head and was in hospital in a stable condition.
He also said the police were still investigating the identity of the gunman and his victims.
"Our prayers are with the families of the victims and injured," said the minister.
Vladimir Mraz, the mayor of Devinska Nova Ves, told the SITA news agency local authorities had warned people through loudspeakers not to go out or near their windows after getting a tip from the police as the firing started.
The police sealed off the neighbourhood and buses were diverted away from the district, which comprises detached houses and a housing estate. - AFP/fa
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