12 slain in shooting at Azerbaijan oil academy

A young man armed with an automatic pistol and clips of ammunition rampaged through a prestigious institute in the Azerbaijan capital Thursday, killing 12 people and wounding others before killing himself, the government said.

Little is known about the gunman and even less about the motive for the bloodshed that shook the faculty and students of the Azerbaijan State Oil Academy, a noted school whose graduates have included future presidents and tycoons.

The suspect, Farda Gadyrov, entered the Azerbaijan State Oil Academy in Baku and climbed five floors of the building, shooting everyone he met along the way, according to a joint statement from the Interior Ministry and state prosecutors.

Gadyrov, a Georgian citizen born in 1980, then shot and killed himself with the gun, a Makarov pistol, when he saw police approaching, according to the statement. It said he had three magazines of ammunition.

The statement gave no motive for the attack in Azerbaijan, a country at the crossroads of western Asia and Eastern Europe, with Russia, Georgia, Armenia and Iran at its borders.

TV footage from inside the academy showed victims lying face down in the corridors, apparently dead, with blood seeping onto the floor. Students carried others, apparently injured, out of the building, and weeping women hurried out.

“We were in an exam, we heard gunshots, we went out of the classroom in panic and saw a gunman opening fire on everyone. Three of my friends were shot,” Bekir Belek, a Turkish student, told CNN-Turk television from a Baku hospital. “Everywhere was covered in blood, all the corridors.”