Braslia, Brazil:
At least three people, including a teenage girl, were killed and 11 others injured when a man opened fire at two schools in southeastern Brazil on Friday, officials said.
Authorities in the town of Aracruz, Espirito Santo state, said the gunman opened fire on a group of teachers from the first school early Friday, killing two women and injuring nine other people.
He then went to another school, where he killed a teenage girl and injured two other people, Mayor Luis Carlos Coutinho told radio network CBN.
Authorities arrested the suspected shooter after a manhunt, state governor Renato Casagrande said.
“We will continue to investigate the motive and should have more information shortly,” the governor wrote on Twitter.
School shootings are relatively rare in Brazil, but have been on the rise in recent years.
In Brazil’s deadliest school shooting in 2011, 12 children were killed when a man opened fire at his former primary school in Realengo, a suburb of Rio de Janeiro, and then killed himself.
In 2019, two former students shot and killed eight people at a high school in Suzano, outside Sao Paulo, before taking their own lives.
Brazilian President-elect Luiz Inacio Lula da Silva called the latest shootings an “absurd tragedy.”
“I was saddened when I heard about the attacks,” he wrote on Twitter.
“All my solidarity with the families of the victims… and my support to Governor Casagrande for the investigation and assistance to the two school communities.”
Lula, who served as Brazil’s president from 2003 to 2010, will take office on January 1 after defeating far-right President Jair Bolsonaro in elections last month.
He has sharply criticized Bolsonaro’s dramatic curbing of gun control laws.
(Except for the headline, this story has not been edited by DailyExpertNews staff and is being published from a syndicated feed.)
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