A teenage student shot dead three fellow pupils and a teacher and wounded at least 20 others at a middle school in the southern Turkish province of Kahramanmaraş on Wednesday, in the country's second school shooting in as many days. The attacker, an eighth-grade student aged around 13 or 14, also died — though authorities say it remains unclear whether he shot himself deliberately or in the chaos of the incident.
According to Kahramanmaraş provincial governor Mükerrem Ünlüer, the student entered the school concealing five firearms and seven magazines in a backpack, weapons believed to have belonged to his father, a former police officer. He forced his way into two classrooms occupied by fifth-grade students — aged 10 and 11 — and opened fire indiscriminately. Witnesses described hearing intense gunfire across the neighbourhood, prompting distraught parents to rush to the school gates. Footage showed ambulances arriving at the scene, students jumping from second-storey windows, and unverified CCTV images appearing to show the attacker shooting two students in a hallway. Four of the 20 wounded were in critical condition and undergoing surgery, the governor said.
The attack came less than 24 hours after a separate shooting on Tuesday, in which a former student opened fire with a shotgun at a high school in the southeastern province of Şanlıurfa, wounding 16 people — including students and teachers — before killing himself in a standoff with police. President Recep Tayyip Erdoğan, speaking to his parliamentary group shortly before Wednesday's attack, promised that those found negligent