TUUSULA - A shell-shocked Finland was in mourning Thursday after a teenaged gunman killed eight people in a school massacre apparently planned to coincide with the anniversary of the Bolshevik revolution.
Flags flew at half mast across the Nordic country a day after 18-year-old Pekka-Eric Auvinen went on his shooting spree at Jokela High School in Tuusla - a small, picturesque town of just 30,000 inhabitants on the banks of a lake north of Helsinki.
Auvinen had advertised his intentions in advance by posting a video entitled "Jokela High School Massacre - 11/7/2007" on the file-sharing website YouTube.
Flowers, wreaths and burning candles were laid out around the grounds of the school Thursday in remembrance of the victims - the school's headmistress, nurse and six students.
"Tuusula will have lifelong scars," mayor Hannu Joensivu told the STT news agency.
Auvinen ended his rampage by turning his gun on himself. He died of his injuries late Wednesday.
Described by some as a loner and a revolutionary obsessed with weapons and revolutionary history, but by others as a "normal" young man with no history of trouble, Auvinen executed the school's headmistress first, before shooting down the nurse and six students.
The Finnish press highlighted how the November 7 date of the massacre, which has gone down as one of the worst tragedies in Finland's recent history, was also the 90th anniversary of the Bolshevik revolution in Russia.
The YouTube video, apparently posted a day before the slaughter, zooms in on the school with heavy metal music blaring in the background and shows a young man against a red background pointing a gun at the camera.
Within hours of the shooting, the video had been downloaded more than 200,000 times.
In his profile on YouTube, Auvinen, calling himself Sturmgeist89, says: "I am prepared to fight and die for my cause.
"I, as a natural selector, will eliminate all who I see unfit, disgraces of human race and failures of natural selection."
A police press conference scheduled for Thursday afternoon was expected to reveal further details of Auvinen's 20 minute rampage, as well as the identities of the victims and more about the motives of the killer.
Police blocked all access to the school, which counts around 450 middle and secondary school students and will remain closed at least until the end of the week.
The massacre, which began at 11:43 a.m. was over in just 20 minutes, with police saying they heard the last shot, supposedly when Auvinen shot himself in the head, at 12:04 p.m.
Witnesses described chaos and panic as wounded and frightened students and teachers tried to flee the carnage.
"We heard the shots and then we broke the windows and jumped out," said Franz Andersin, a 14-year-old student who was in the school when the shooting spree started. "I knew the guy. He was always smiling. I wonder why he did it," he told AFP.
The shooting sent shockwaves through Finland, which with its mere 5.4 million inhabitants and low crime rates, is unaccustomed to such violence.
Finnish Prime Minister Matti Vanhanen described the shooting, the worst in the Nordic country's history, as "a great tragedy."
"This is an awful day... The shooting has deeply undermined the sense of security in society... Nobody had expected such things," Vanhanen said.
By Gael Branchereau
Agence France Presse
