Shooter opens fire near high school in Turkiye, wounding at least 11

An attacker opened fire near a high school in western Turkiye on Tuesday and wounded at least 11 people, officials said. The suspected shooter was arrested.

At least two of the injured were in serious condition, Justice Minister Akin Gurlek said in a statement on X.

The attack took place in front of a vocational and technical high school in Turgutlu district, in Manisa province, the provincial governor’s office said. Police and medical teams were immediately sent to the scene.

HaberTurk news channel said the assailant was a student at the school. The report added that he arrived at the scene armed with a shotgun he took from his grandmother’s house and fired randomly near the school before trying to flee the scene on foot.

The motive of the attack was not known, according to Gurlek, who said two chief prosecutors were appointed to investigate the shooting, including claims that the student was bullied at the school.

The assailant’s parents and grandfather, who owned the gun, were taken into custody as part of the investigation, Gurlek said.

Anxious parents rushed to the school and confrontations broke out between them and police who blocked entrance to the building, Cumhuriyet newspaper reported.

The attack came months after Turkiye was shocked by two school shootings this year. The government increased security at educational facilities at the start of the academic year last week.

In April, 16 people, mostly students, were wounded when a former student opened fire at a high school in Sanliurfa province in Turkiye’s southeast. The assailant later killed himself.

The next day, a 14-year-old student opened fire on two classrooms at his school in nearby Kahramanmaras province, killing eight students and a teacher and wounding 13 others. The attacker was killed by police.