A student shot and killed 10 people at a vocational school in western Finland yesterday before turning the gun on himself, in the country's second such attack in less than a year.
The gunman, identified by a local government official as student Matti Juhani Saari, 22, died later of a head wound in Tampere University Hospital, the hospital's medical director said.
"According to latest information given to me, the number of deaths is 11," Interior Minister Anne Holmlund said in a live interview with Finnish national broadcaster YLE.
In an echo of last year's deadly attack at Finland's Jokela high school, Mr Saari posted menacing comments and videos of himself wielding a gun on the internet in the run-up to his shooting rampage.
"A cold-blooded shooter entered the building with an automatic pistol and started cutting down students," said Jukka Forsberg, a maintenance man at the school in the town of Kauhajoki where the shooting occurred.
"He also shot towards me. I did not say anything but once the bullets started to whizz I started running for my life."
Many of the students at the post-secondary school, which teaches catering and tourism studies, are around 20 years old.
Mr Holmlund told a news conference earlier yesterday that police were in contact with Mr Saari a day before the shooting, after they were alerted to footage posted on the web showing him firing a handgun at a shooting range.
"Police reached him on Monday and asked him to be interviewed regarding the shooting video," Mr Holmlund said.
"... Police action will be examined in more detail later. The gunman had a temporary permit for a .22 calibre pistol, and he had received it in last month. It was his first gun."
Gun ownership in Finland is among the highest in the world, but crime rates in general are low. The internet link revived memories of last year's deadly attack at Jokela high school, where student Pekka-Eric Auvinen killed six fellow students, the school nurse and the principal after broadcasting his intent in a YouTube video.
Mr Auvinen shot himself and died later of his injuries.
"We have experienced a tragic day," Prime Minister Matti Vanhanen said in Helsinki after the Kauhajoki attack.