A student shot dead nine people at a school in western Finland this morning before shooting himself, in the country's second school shooting in less than a year, local media and authorities said.

The gunman was still alive but wounded and in hospital, authorities said.

"A cold-blooded shooter entered the building with an automatic pistol and started cutting down students," said Jukka Forsberg, a maintenance man at the vocational school in the town of Kauhajoki.

"He also shot towards me, did not say anything and once the bullets started to whizz by I started running for my life."

Local authorities said students and staff had been evacuated from the school, where a fire broke out but was later extinguished.

"Several are dead," said Kauhajoki Mayor Antti Rantakokko. "The situation is over now."

The school, which calls itself the "Kauhajoki School of Hospitality", had 150 students and 40 teachers as of 2005, according to the official website.

Rescue coordinator Kari Saarinen, who is also chief physician at Seinajoki hospital, about 60 kms (40 miles) from Kauhajoki, said hospitals in the area were on full emergency alert.

He said he was unsure about the number of victims, but believed there were several -- some wounded, some dead.

The shooting raised the spectre of the killings at Finland's Jokela high school last year, where student Pekka-Eric Auvinen killed six fellow students, the school nurse and the principal after broadcasting his intent with a video on YouTube.

Auvinen shot himself and died later of his injuries.

"This is very very depressing. We have only had some time since the Jokela case last November," Saarinen said.

Rantakokko said there were echoes of Jokela in the Kauhajoki incident.

"On the Internet there is some information, there are analogies to the Jokela case," he said.

A search of YouTube yielded four videos filmed by a user who calls himself Mr. Saari, who said he was 22 years old and lived in Kauhajoki. The videos, between 20 and 32 seconds long, show a man dressed in black or dark colours, firing a handgun at a shooting range.

The YouTube user's profile included the words: "And suddenly there was war and the mothers they screamed. For revenge and reprisals for another war."

The videos were taken offline soon after the shooting.

Finland has one of the highest rates of gun ownership in the world, ranking third after the United States and Yemen, according to a study last year by the Geneva-based Graduate Institute of International Studies