Details of Finland school shooting released

Police in Finland have released details about the victims of yesterday's school massacre in western Finland, saying eight women…

Police in Finland have released details about the victims of yesterday's school massacre in western Finland, saying eight women and two men were killed by the 22-year-old gunman.

They also confirmed the gunman as Matti Saari, a student police questioned a day before yesterday's rampage over YouTube clips showing him firing a handgun.

Saari was released on Monday because police said they found no reason to keep him in custody.

The National Bureau of Investigation said all the women were students, while one of the men was a teacher and the other a student. The bureau said Saari also wounded an additional female student before shooting himself in the head.

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Identification of the victims has been complicated because the victims were badly burned by fires that Saari started during his killing spree at the vocational college in Kauhajoki, a town of 14,000 residents, 180 miles northwest of Helsinki.

A police spokesman said Saari had acquired a permit for his weapon, a .22-calibre handgun, in August.

"With this weapon and plenty of ammunition, he came into the school yesterday morning and he also had a largish bag which apparently had flammable liquids or something to start fires," he said.

Police said they arrived at the scene within 10 minutes of receiving the alarm. The gunman fired several shots at the officers, but none of them was hit.

The college is attended by about 200 students, most in their late teens or early 20s.

Yesterday's shooting spree in Kauhajoki is the worst recorded on a school campus worldwide since a gunman in the US killed 32 fellow students and teachers at Virginia Polytechnic Institute and State University in April 2007. Flags flew at half-staff above the rooftops of Helsinki today.

The attack has provoked a debate over Finland's gun laws and policing after the government said officers interviewed the assailant the day before he opened fire at his catering college.