Bomb attack plans found at Austria gunman's home

Police officers walk towards the flat of the 21-year-old suspect

Abandoned plans for a bomb attack have been found at the home of the suspected gunman in a school shooting in Austria, police have said.

Police in the south-eastern city of Graz also found a non-functional pipe bomb, and a "farewell" letter and video during the search, they said in a statement.

Ten people were killed in the attack at the secondary school on Tuesday - the deadliest in the country's recent history.

The suspect, a 21-year-old former student at the school, took his own life in a school bathroom shortly after the attack, according to police. Authorities have not yet drawn any conclusions on the gunman's possible motive.

The incident, which left a further 11 people injured, took place at Dreierschützengasse secondary school in the north-west of the city.

Six females and three males were killed in the attack, and a seventh female later died in hospital.

The victims were a teacher and nine students aged between 14 and 17, police said. All were Austrian citizens, except for one who was Polish.

The 11 injured - aged between 15 and 26 - are not in a critical condition, police said.

Police said the suspect was born in Styria - the region in which Graz sits - and lived with his single mother, who was also Austrian, in the Graz-Umgebung District.

They added that his father, of Armenian origin, had not lived with them since his parents' separation.

Current information suggests the shooter legally owned the two guns used in the attack - a pistol and a shotgun - and had a firearms licence, police said. They added that the guns would be forensically examined.

The gunman, who has not yet been named, did not graduate from the school, Interior Minister Gerhard Karner told a news conference earlier. He was not known to the authorities prior to the attack, police also confirmed.

Analysis of evidence and data storage devices will continue over the coming weeks and hundreds of people will be interviewed, they said.

The incident would be reconstructed to shed light on how events unfolded, police added.

They said police first arrived at the school six minutes after the first emergency call was made at 10:00 on Tuesday, with a rapid response unit and specialist Cobra tactical unit - which handles attacks and hostage situations - arriving by 10:17.

Styrian police said this quick reaction "appears to have saved several lives".

Police have increased security measures around schools in the city since the attack.

Speaking in Graz, President Alexander van der Bellen suggested Austria's gun laws could be changed in the wake of the attack: "If we come to the conclusion that the gun law needs to be changed, then we will do so."

Local media reports that relatives of the victims and school pupils are being cared for at a crisis intervention centre set up across the road from the school.

A teacher there told news agency AFP that he narrowly escaped after finding himself in a corridor with the shooter.

Paul Nitsche, who teaches religion, said that he was working by himself with the door open on the upper floor of the school when he heard gunshots.

The 51-year-old said he then ran out of the room and saw the gunman when he was in the corridor on the floor below.

"He was trying to shoot the door [of a classroom] open with his rifle," he said. "He was busy [...] and I didn't look around much either [...] I didn't hang around."

Astrid, who lives with her husband Franz in a residential building next to the school, told the BBC she had just finished hanging out the washing when she heard 30 to 40 gunshots.

"We saw one pupil at the window - it looked like he was getting ready to jump out... but then he went back inside," Franz said.

The couple later saw students exiting the school and gathered on the street.

Three days of mourning were declared in Austria following the attack, and a nationwide minute's silence was held on Wednesday at 10:00 local time (08:00 GMT) in memory of the victims. The Austrian flag has been lowered to half-mast on all public buildings.

After the minute's silence in Graz's main square, one woman, Tores, told BBC News that she knew one of the boys who had died. He was 17.

"I've know this family for a long time, including the son of the family, and knew that he attended that school. I rang immediately, to ask if everything is OK. Then they let me know at midday, that the boy was one of those slaughtered," she said.

The incident is the deadliest mass shooting in Austria's recent history.

In 2020, jihadist gunman Kujtim Fejzulai shot four people dead and wounded 23 others on a rampage through Vienna's busy nightlife district.

Meanwhile, in 2016, a gunman opened fire at a concert in the town of Nenzing, killing two people before shooting himself dead. Eleven other people were injured in the attack.