Russian Church Shooting - 2 Dead, 6 Wounded

Huffington Post

A gunman opened fire on Sunday in a Russian Orthodox cathedral on the island of Sakhalin, off Russia's eastern coast, killing a nun and a churchgoer and wounding six other people, officials said.

The shooting happened as Russian security forces are on high alert due to concerns about possible attacks on the Winter Olympics in Sochi, thousands of kilometres (miles) to the west. There was no apparent link to the Games.

The gunman was detained at the scene after the shooting at the main cathedral in the city of Yuzhno-Sakhalinsk, on the island in the Sea of Okhotsk, north of Japan, the federal Investigative Committee said.

It added that the suspect had worked as a security guard in Yuzhno-Sakhalinsk, some 6,650 km (4,130 miles) from Moscow.

There have been a handful of shooting sprees in offices and public places in Russia in recent years, but they are relatively rare and state-run media tend to treat such attacks as a largely American phenomenon.

The Feb. 3 shooting at a Moscow school, in which a student used his father's rifles, has led to calls for stiffer punishment for gun owners whose weapons are used in attacks.

Moscow Teen Kills Two in Rare Russian School Shooting

Yahoo News

A teenager described as a model student shot a teacher and a police officer dead and took more than 20 of his schoolmates hostage in a Moscow classroom on Monday, days before Russia hosts the Winter Olympics under tight security.

The suspect was disarmed and detained about an hour after the shootings after talking to his father, the owner of the two rifles with which he forced his way into the school in northern Moscow at midday.

Irina Yarovaya, a pro-Kremlin lawmaker who heads the security committee in the State Duma, put some blame on "propaganda of aggression", such as violent computer games, but also said access to guns should be tightened.

She said the punishment for legal gun owners whose negligence enabled others to get their hands on weapons was "infinitesimal". The maximum sentence for the offence is six months.

Duma international affairs committee head Alexei Pushkov suggested Russia had embraced U.S. culture with deadly effect.

"Moscow school shooting: American movies and domestic serials, full of violence, are producing results - now it is like the USA here," he tweeted. "Is this what we wanted?"