ERFURT (Germany), April 26: A student bent on revenge for being expelled from his school shot dead 14 teachers, two pupils, a police officer and himself on Friday in Germany’s worst mass murder since World War Two, police said.

Armed with a pump-action shotgun and a handgun, he walked though the Gutenberg high school in the eastern town of Erfurt, blasting teachers he found in the corridors and classrooms.

The scale of the murder rivals the worst school killings anywhere in the world in recent years. It stunned Germans, whose sense of security was upset just weeks ago by the deaths of 11 German tourists in a bomb blast in Tunisia.

Chancellor Gerhard Schroeder said he was “staggered” by the crime, and cancelled an election campaign event planned for Saturday.

“This rampage by an insane man has cost the lives of 18 people including himself,” said Manfred Scherer, state secretary for the state of Thuringia, of which Erfurt is the capital.

“Police called to the scene found a scene of horror. There were dead people in the corridors, in the classrooms, one was found in the toilet,” one police spokesman said. Six others were seriously wounded in the shooting spree.

One of two police officers who arrived at the school after the janitor reported hearing shots in the morning, was immediately shot dead, Grube said.

One 12-year-old girl told a radio reporter she had watched a teacher dying in front of her eyes. Reports of the incident throughout the day were confused and police had earlier spoken of two gunmen.—Reuters