Death toll from Türkiye’s second school shooting in a week rises to 10
Istanbul– The death toll from Turkey’s second school shooting in two days rose to 10 on Thursday after another victim died while being treated in hospital, officials said.
Six of those injured in the shooting the previous day were in critical condition before they died early Thursday, officials said.
Isa Aras Mersinli, 14, opened fire in two classrooms at a middle school in the southern city of Kahramanmaraş on Wednesday.
killing a teacher and eight students and wounding 13 others.
The slain gunman had arrived at the school with five firearms and seven magazines belonging to his father, a retired superintendent of police, who was arrested after the attack.
Just a day after this, Wednesday’s attack took place; 16 people were injured. When a former student opened fire at a high school in the nearby province of Sanliurfa. Most of the victims were students. The attacker later killed himself. As of Thursday, 20 people had been detained in connection with Tuesday’s shooting in Sanliurfa.
The interior and education ministries held a joint school safety meeting in the capital Ankara on Thursday, attended by both ministers and all 81 of Turkey’s provincial governors, as well as police chiefs and provincial education directors.
Türkiye’s National Police Headquarters revealed that the suspect’s profile picture on the messaging platform WhatsApp was Elliot Rodger. A college student who killed six people in California in 2014.
The Ministry of Family and Social Services announced Thursday that it has set up a team to “provide psychosocial support” to students and their families. It also plans to conduct a comprehensive investigation into similar incidents.
The eight students, each aged 11 and over, who died on Wednesday were cremated on Thursday afternoon. Ayla Kara, a 55-year-old mathematics teacher who died during the attack, was also buried on Thursday.
Cevdet Yesil, whose son Adnan Gokturk Yesil was among the victims, said he rushed to the school on Wednesday after being informed of the shooting.
Yesil said, “And unfortunately we searched for our child, our son, until 5 o’clock in the evening; some way or the other, our security forces found him.” “We went to the hospital and identified (his remains). We saw that he was dead.”
Hundreds of teachers gathered in Ankara and the city of Izmir to demand more school security. Until this week, school shootings were rare in TurkOn Thursday, authorities arrested dozens of students forover social media posts suggesting they might carry out similar attacks. Justice Minister Akin Gürlek announced that 67 social media users had been detained over posts targeting 54 different schools.
