Terror before Christmas in Prague, 16 killed, 25 injured

PRAGUE – The gunman who unleashed terror on Prague is now suspected of shooting dead a man and his newborn baby in a ‘random’ attack at a forest near the Czech capital last week, police have revealed.

David Kozak, 24, killed 14 people and injured 25 during a rampage in which he targeted students at his university in downtown Prague, police said, adding that he was shot dead after carrying out the horrific attack.

Kozak murdered his father in the town of Hostoun before heading into the Czech capital where he began randomly shooting people from the balcony of Charles University Arts faculty.

He had a huge arsenal of weapons and ammunition with him, with the country’s Interior Minister saying that ‘if the police hadn’t entered the building in time, the perpetrator wouldn’t have been dead on the roof and there would have been a lot more victims.’

In the lead up to his killing spree, Kozak is thought to have kept a diary in Russian on messaging app Telegram, writing in one chilling post: ‘I want to do a school shooting and possibly suicide.’

As the sickening sound of gunshots echoed through a Prague university this afternoon, terrified students and professors were forced to resort to extreme measures in order to survive. At least ten people were killed and dozens injured in the devastating mass shooting which was carried out by a lone gunman at Charles University Faculty of Arts at around 3pm.

Dramatic footage from the attack shows how desperate students and teachers clinged on to narrow ledges 40ft up, locked themselves in classrooms and built barricades with furniture as the sound of gunshots kept coming. Police in Prague confirmed this afternoon that the gunman had been ‘eliminated’. A chilling image shared on local media purports to show the man dressed in black aiming a rifle at people below while standing on top of a faculty building.