Stunned Germans mourn school victims

Students mourn the death of friends and teachers

Chancellor Gerhard Schroeder has led Germans in mourning after a gunman ran amok in a school in the eastern city of Erfurt, killing 16 people before shooting himself.

The killer had been banned from the school

Mr Schroeder placed a bouquet of flowers in front of the school and stood in silence as flags flew at half-mast throughout Germany.

New details have emerged of Friday's attack, in which 13 teachers, two students - a 15-year-old boy and 14-year-old girl - and one policeman were shot by a student expelled from the school several months earlier.

A teacher told German television how he had confronted the 19-year-old killer, Robert Steinhaeuser, and locked him inside a room, helping to end the ordeal.

Mask off

Steinhaeuser was wearing a mask and black clothes as he burst into a classroom at the Johannes Gutenberg secondary school, where pupils were sitting a maths exam.

He used a pump-action shotgun and a handgun to shoot his victims in classrooms and corridors throughout the school.

After the janitor alerted the police, he turned his fire on them, killing one 42-year old officer.

He then used his gun to shoot himself.

Chancellor Schroeder was visibly sad

Police said they found hundreds of rounds of ammunition beside his body, indicating he may have intended to kill many more people.

The police have praised the courage of the schoolteacher - identified as Rainer Heise.

Mr Heise told ZDF television that he had grabbed the youth's shirt and tried to talk to him, after the killer had pulled off his mask.

In the interview, Mr Heise said her had told Steinhaeuser to "go ahead and shoot me but look me in the face".

The killer then said: "That's it for today".

"I pushed him into the room and locked the door," said the teacher.

Shock

The German authorities say the killer was a member of a gun club and had recently been given a weapons permit.

He had been expelled from the school in February for forging absentee notes after he had to repeat his final year.

	Major school shootings: 1996: 16 children and a teacher shot dead at Dunblane Primary School, Scotland 1998: 4 pupils and a teacher killed by 2 boys aged 11 and 13 at Westside Middle School, Arkansas, in the US 1999: 12 pupils and a teacher killed by 2 teenage gunmen at Columbine High School, Colorado in the US  Full chronology

Shocked inhabitants of Erfurt, a city of 200,000 people in eastern Germany, have been laying flowers outside the school and many church services have been held.

"I never thought of him as a person capable of this," classmate Thomas Rethfeldt said. "He was reserved. I never thought he was a person capable of violence."

A teacher at the school, Andreas Foerster, recalled that Steinhaeuser was "a quiet and reasonable sort of guy.

"I see him before my eyes and I just cannot fathom that he would be capable of a crime like this."

Steinhaeuser lived with his mother, a hospital worker, in a flat only 10 minutes from the school.

Unimaginable

Chancellor Schroeder and his wife Doris looked visibly shaken as they laid the flowers. Mr Schroeder had described the massacre in the quiet provincial city as "beyond the powers of the imagination".

The mayor of Erfurt, Manfred Ruge, said: "It is the darkest day in history for our town. We all wish we could somehow turn back the clock."

And Interior Minister Otto Schily commented: "We must also ask ourselves the deeper question of what actually is going on in our society when a young person causes such disaster in such a way."