A man opened fire on Tuesday at a kindergarten in the Ulianovsk region of central Russia, killing three people, including two children, before committing suicide, according to regional authorities and the Interfax agency.
“According to preliminary information, there were shots in a kindergarten. Two children were killed, a teacher and the assailant as well,” Dmitri Kamal, a spokesman for the Ulianovsk region, told AFP.
He specified that the age of the children is not known, but that they are probably “between three and six years old”, and said that investigators are at the scene.
According to Russian news agencies, citing law enforcement, “the cause of the shooting could be a family conflict.”
The deputy and former governor of the region, Sergei Morozov, told the Ria Novosti press agency that a young teacher and two children born in 2016 and 2018 died.
The Telegram Baza chain, known for its relations with the security forces, indicated that the man entered the school during siesta time, armed with a hunting rifle.
Deadly shootings, especially in schools, have increased in recent years in Russia.
President Vladimir Putin has been alarmed by this situation, seeing in it a phenomenon imported from the United States and a perverse effect of globalization, which led to tougher legislation on carrying weapons.
In September 2021, an 18-year-old student shot with a hunting rifle at Perm University in the Urals, causing six deaths and around 30 injuries.
In May 2021, a 19-year-old man shot up his former school, killing seven students.
The bloodiest shooting occurred in October 2018, when a student killed 19 people before committing suicide at a high school in Kerch, on the annexed Crimean peninsula.
