Student armed with rifles shoots dead policeman and teacher at Moscow school

A 10TH-GRADE student armed with two rifles burst into his Moscow school and killed his 76-year-old geography teacher and a policeman before being taken into custody, investigators said.

None of the children in School No. 263 at the time were hurt, said Karina Sabitova, a police spokeswoman at the scene. The school is for children in grades one through 11, as is typical in Russia.

The student gunman also seriously wounded a second police officer who had responded to an alarm from the school, police said.

Such shootings in Russian schools are extremely rare, but Moscow Mayor Sergei Sobyanin called for full review of security systems in city schools in light of the attack.

A school security guard was unable to stop the armed teenager from entering, but managed to hit an alarm before following him to his classroom, the spokesman for Russia's main investigative agency said. It was not immediately clear whether the security guard was armed.

The student fatally shot the teacher and opened fire on police officers who responded to the alarm, Vladimir Markin, spokesman for the Investigative Committee, said in a statement.

Mr Markin said the student fired at least 11 times from a small-calibre rifle, Russian news agencies reported. He said the boy was an excellent student and apparently had had an emotional breakdown. Investigators were questioning him, his classmates and the security guard, the spokesman said.

The student was also carrying a carbine, a short-barreled rifle, Moscow police chief Anatoly Yakunin said, according to Russian news agencies. Both rifles belonged to his father and were legally registered, he said.

Gun ownership is legal in Russia but weapons need to be registered.

Taken to safety ... police officers evacuate children from School No. 263. No children were hurt in the shooting.

Crime scene ... a police officer uses a metal detector outside the Moscow school where the shooting took place.

School shooting ... an armed teenager burst into the school and killed a security guard and a teacher before being taken into custody.