Gunman kills eight in Czech Republic

Eight people were shot dead in a restaurant in an eastern Czech town on Tuesday, the town’s mayor said on Czech Television.

“My information is that there are several injured and about eight dead after the shooter’s rampage,” Mayor Patrik Kuncar said in a live broadcast.

He quoted police as saying the attacker had killed himself after the shooting spree.

“I have been conveyed information that it was a 60-year-old local man, probably mentally unstable,” said Kuncar, mayor of Uhersky Brod, 300 km (180 miles) southeast of Prague.

Interior Minister Milan Chovanec had earlier told news agency CTK he had been informed there were eight victims.

Czech Television said the attacker fired about 25 rounds. An eyewitness told the channel he had seen around 10 police cars arrive and police putting on bulletproof vests.

Such shooting incidents are very rare in the central European country of 10.5 million. Uhersky Brod is a town of 17,000 in the Moravia region, near the border with Slovakia.

The shooting took place at around lunchtime in the Druzba restaurant in the southern part of the town, a residential area.

SOURCE: REUTERS, THE TIMES OF EARTH