The Czech Prime Minister Petr Fiala has declared December 23 a day of national mourning after a shooting spree at the philosophical faculty of Charles University in Prague which claimed lives of 14 people and the 24-year-old killer.

The heavily-armed shooter began firing at people shortly before 3pm on the fourth floor of the building located right in the city centre’s iconic Old Town, causing panic in the nearby tourist areas and as far as the Charles Bridge.

Pictures emerged of chaotic scenes of people escaping the building with their arms above their heads and others hiding on the building’s ledge three floors above the busy street, which was quickly cordoned off by police.

“At 14:59 we obtained information about shooting at Palach square. Regular units were on the scene within several minutes, the intervention squad within 12 minutes. At 15:20 police reported the motionless body of the shooter,” head of police Martin Vondrasek was quoted as saying by Czech Radio following the shooting.

Social media sites including Facebook were quickly flooded with posts from people in and outside the faculty who urged their colleagues and students to barricade themselves and turn off the lights.

“If one of you stayed at FF UK’s main building, lock yourself, there is shooter,” one such message read.

Among those killed was the head of the Institute of Music Research at the Philosophical Faculty, respected scholar Lenka Hlavkova. 

It later emerged that police were on the trail of the shooter and evacuated another philosophical faculty building in Celetna street, within walking distance from Palach square, just minutes before the shooter opened fire at the main building.

At an evening press conference police said they have been following a suspect who shot a man in Hostoun, a village west of Prague, whom police said was the father of the shooter.

Police also said an investigation is under way to establish whether the shooter was responsible for tragic shooting of three others, including a 32-year-old and his two-month-old baby in the Klanovice forest outside Prague last week, a triple murder that shook the Czech public.

Vondrasek said Prague police investigators “have made vast number of activities” and that “it wasn’t within the powers of anyone to verify the identity of the suspect before Thursday” December 21.

The shooter was in legal possession of his extensive arsenal and Minister of Interior Vit Rakusan told media that the toll would have been much higher had police not intervened swiftly.

Czechia has lenient gun possession laws, with a constitutional amendment made to the charter of fundamental rights in 2021 guaranteeing “the right to defend one’s own life or the life of another person with a weapon”.

The Guardian’s former correspondent in Prague, Robert Tait, noted that “by 2020 there were more than 307,000 legal gun owners” in a country of about 10.7mn people.

Due to relaxed security, practically anyone could have walked into the main philosophical faculty building located just between the medieval Jewish cemetery and Rudolfinum, the seat of the country’s philharmonic orchestra, with the world-famous skyline of the Prague Castle district across the Vltava river.

Due to the relaxed security, practically anyone could have walked into the main philosophical faculty building located just between the medieval Jewish cemetery and Rudolfinum, the seat of the country’s philharmonic orchestra, with the world-famous skyline of the Prague Castle district across the Vltava river.

“We always thought that this was a thing that did not concern us,” Prague mayor Bohuslav Svoboda (ODS) was quoted as saying by Czech Television.

However, this is not the first shooting spree on recent record. In February 2015, a 63-year-old man gunned down eight people in a restaurant in Uhersky Brod in the east of the country.

Uhersky Brod is also where the traditional weapons manufacturer, today known as Colt CZ, part of the country’s active firearms and ammunition industry, comes from.