KYIV, Ukraine 鈥� Ukrainian police shot dead a gunman who killed six people and wounded several more in Kyiv on Saturday.
It was the deadliest mass shooting in Ukraine in years, raising concern that such attacks may become more frequent as Ukraine鈥檚 war with Russia has sharply increased the number of firearms in circulation and exacerbated people鈥檚 traumas.
Ukrainian officials said the attacker was a 58-year-old native of Moscow who was living in Kyiv but had previously lived in Ukraine鈥檚 eastern Donetsk region. They did not give his name or a possible motive for the attack. Ukraine鈥檚 prosecutor general, Ruslan Kravchenko, said the shootings were being investigated as a terrorist act.
Kravchenko said in a statement that the attacker first shot and killed four people on the street before barricading himself inside a nearby supermarket, where he fatally shot another person and took several people hostage. A sixth victim died in a hospital, and at least 14 more people were hurt, Ukrainian officials said.
Some expressed fears that Ukraine, a country long spared the mass shootings commonly seen in the United States, might now be more vulnerable to them as a result of the war. Over the past four years, hundreds of thousands of people have learned to use firearms, while many more have experienced trauma from the loss of loved ones or from bombardments. Combined with the risk that Russia could seek to support individual acts of violence to sow chaos in Ukraine, these factors have created a volatile mix.
Saturday鈥檚 killing bore the hallmarks of a mass shooting in which people were targeted at random.
President Volodymyr Zelenskyy said the gunman had first set fire to his apartment before going out on the street and opening fire on people. His deadly path could be traced on the ground there Saturday evening: A man鈥檚 bloodstained body lay just outside the building the gunman had exited, with a second body, covered by an emergency blanket, a few yards away.
A few streets over was the supermarket where the gunman had barricaded himself and taken several people hostage. It was now cordoned off by police.
Just an hour before, special police forces had stormed the supermarket after negotiations with the gunman failed. They killed him in the operation and rescued four hostages, Ukrainian officials said.
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