Police at the scene of the attack in Kuopio, Finland. BBC/ILTV.
An attacker in Finland has killed one person and wounded 10 more in a sword attack targeting a community college. BBC. The suspect was carrying a "saber type weapon" and also carried a gun. The suspect killed one person and stabbed several others. He also attempted to start a fire. The suspect was a student at the college and was shot by the police. An officer was also wounded. Students also reportedly fought with the attacker, hitting him with chairs.
My Comment:
An under-reported story lost in the impeachment drama. This seems like what could have been a devastating attack but it ended with only one person dead. He had the potential to kill a large number of people but seems to have failed.
His plot was fairly simple but could have been effective. He was able to injure quite a few people with his sword but the attempted arson could have killed dozens. It failed mostly because his arson attack failed. Had the school caught on fire there could have been dozens dead and even more wounded.
The attack also failed because the students decided to fight back. Though throwing chairs at the attacker didn't stop him, it did slow him down. Had he faced no resistance he could have stabbed a lot more people before he got stopped by the cops. And police response was good too as they shot this attacker before he could kill more people.
It's unclear what, if any, motive the attacker has. I won't speculate too much but in these cases the motive usually doesn't matter too much. I doubt it was political or religious in nature. But without more information it's hard to tell.
Finland is a fairly safe country that also has a large amount of gun ownership. It seems strange to me that the attacker had a gun but didn't use it. It does show that you can injure and kill a large number of people without using one, though in this case it didn't really make sense not to use one.
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