Student kills two at Moscow school

MOSCOW - A 10th-grade student with two rifles burst into his Moscow school on Monday, killing his geography teacher and a policeman in front of about 20 students, investigators said. His father played a key role in freeing those students before police stormed the classroom and took his son into custody, the city police chief said.

The shooter also seriously wounded a second police officer, investigators said.

None of the approximately 400 children in School No. 263 were hurt, said Karina Sabitova, a police spokeswoman. But students were so fearful that some ran from the building with their teachers without stopping to put on coats in below-freezing temperatures. The school in northeast Moscow holds grades one through 11.

School shootings in Russia are extremely rare. Any attack on a school, however, brings back memories of the Beslan school siege in 2004, when Islamic militants from Russia's North Caucasus took about 1,000 people hostage, most of them children. More than 300 hostages were killed when Russian security forces stormed that school.

Russia is also now on alert for terrorist attacks, especially after Islamic militants threatened to strike during the Sochi Winter Olympics, which begin Friday. Monday's attack, however, raised no suspicions of any link to terrorism.

Vladimir Markin, spokesman for Russia's main investigative agency, identified the teenager as Sergei Gordeyev, who fired at least 11 times from a small-caliber rifle, also killing one police officer and wounding a second. The youth's father was immediately called to the school. Wearing a bullet-proof vest provided by police, he went into the classroom. About 30 minutes later, the trapped students walked out, leaving the father and son alone, and police special forces stormed in.