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full screenThree students comfort each other outside the school in Jokela, where nine people were killed in a school shooting in 2007. Stock image. Photo: Peter Dejong/AP/TT
Finland has previously been shaken by several school shootings.
The deadliest shootings occurred in 2007 and 2008, when nine and eleven people were killed, respectively.
In 1989, the first known school shooting in Finland occurred, at a school in Raumo in the southwestern part of the country. A 14-year-old student then shot two other students to death with a weapon that belonged to his father.
In November 2007, eight people were killed at a school in the village of Jokela in southern Finland when an 18-year-old student opened fire. Six of them were students, one was a nurse and one was a principal. Twelve other people were shot. The perpetrator, who according to reports had been subjected to bullying for a long time, then took his own life.
In September 2008, a 22-year-old student entered a vocational school in Kauhajoki in western Finland and opened fire with a semi-automatic weapon on students who were writing an exam. Eleven people were killed, including the shooter, who also allegedly suffered bullying. In this case too, the perpetrator took his own life.
In March 2012, a young man fired several shots into a classroom at a school in Orivesi near Tampere. No one was seriously physically injured, but the perpetrator is said to have shot one person before arriving at the school.
In 2016, a 21-year-old woman from Helsinki was arrested on suspicion of having planned a mass murder in a school.