A 30-year-old Russian lawyer shot dead five colleagues at his pharmaceutical firm in Moscow today in what appeared to be a drunken rampage after his girlfriend left him.

Dressed in camouflage gear and armed with two semi-automatic rifles, Dmitry Vinogradov shot dead three men and two women at their desks before giving himself up to security guards, the Russian Investigative Committee said in a statement. Another man and a woman were wounded.

Local media said Vinogradov had gone on a five-day drinking binge after being jilted by a pharmacist at the firm. It was not clear whether she was among those shot.

"The young man - a lawyer at the pharmaceutical chain - was left by a girl, after which he went drinking," a law enforcement source told the Interfax news agency.

In a gruesome letter left on his social media page, Vinogradov voiced a deep hatred for those around him.

"What I saw and learned in my life nourished in me a hatred of mankind," he wrote on his page on VKontakte, the Russian version of Facebook.

"I hate mankind and life itself. I see only one way to justify it: Kill as many pieces of human compost as possible ... this is the only way to make the world better."

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