Consolation and Fear After the Prague Attack

While residents are remembering the victims, police are on the street, while the speeches have been canceled for other students. The Czech Republic has declared days of mourning to honour the victims.

Selma Muhic Dizdarevic, one of Prague residents, said they are still recovering from what happened on December 21st. She is a professor at Carl University and has a son who studies at the same faculty where the attack occurred. That day he was going to the speeches, but he forgot his wallet.

Because he was delayed in 1015 minutes. When he arrived at the faculty, he could not enter, the shooting had only begun. We were saved, but we are sorry for all”, Dizdarevic told Radio Free Europe.

Her 26-year-old son, Tariq, a history student in the same department where the attacker was studying, said he was surprised and confused and is still waiting for details to become white.

Because he forgot his wallet, he went to college later than he did.

“Metro did not stop at the station I should exit. I was on my way, and only on the subway was the story. When I saw something happening, they started shooting and a station in front of the station where I had to exit, we were informed that the subway would not stop there. But the authorities did not explain why. Although I only knew why, so I went out and decided to go back”, Mup said.

His mother, professor of civil society studies programme at the Faculty of Human Science, said the whole event is incomprehensible. Her son, she said, should take part in a third-floor speech, while the attacker killed people on the fourth floor.

I criticized him for the wallet job. But he has finally avoided a far greater tragedy because of the wallet. This shows how much our happiness depends on certain things in which we have no impact”, Dizdarevic added.

One of the victims was also the director of the music institute. She was an extraordinary woman, who worked hard to popularise medieval music”, Dizdarevic said.

Among the victims are no foreign citizens, meanwhile, among the wounded are two citizens of the United Arab Emirates and a citizen of the Netherlands. This was the first time that mass shooting was fired in the Czech Republic at an educational institution, and it was the most serious mass shooting that took place in this country.

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What happened inside the building when the assailant carried out the attack later indicated Russian historian Sergei Medvedev, who legalizes this university. He himself was barricaded in a classroom with his students.

We were on the third floor. The shooting, I understand, happened on the fourth floor. The stairs were bloody, not entirely, but there was blood and traces of blood. On the first and second floors were bars, some of which included bodies. We waited. From the moment the shooting started, we stayed for more than an hour in class”, said Medvedev, who runs the show “Archaeology” on the Russian-language Radio Free Europe radio.

All the students who were with him were saved.

Among the people on the third floor during the attack was Lisa Chukhraova, a first-year student.

“heard screams and then gunshots. It wasn't clear whether the shooting was happening inside or outside”. According to her, one of the students went to the bathroom and a few seconds later returned and said the police were in the hallways. After that, the students shut themselves in the classroom, where they stayed for 40 minutes, then the police broke the school door and told everyone to lie on the ground.

Then they took us off the street with their hands up. There was a lot of blood, many bars and ambulances near”, Chukharova said.

Kosovo student worried about security in Prague

In the afternoon of December 21st, Albionia Ademi from Kosovo began coming messages from people he had not spoken to since.

“Are you all right?”, asked people who contacted him in different forms, leaving him surprised.

Soon she found out through a group of Karli University colleagues in Prague, Czechia, that massive shootings had occurred at the university building.

I wanted to precede my parents, who had not yet read anything. I immediately contacted them to say that there was an attack on my university, but that I wasn't there, that I was inside the apartment now and I was sure of”, the student from Kosovo remembers.

Albionia has launched master-level studies for the Balkans, Central Europe and Eurasian at the Faculty of Social Sciences at Carl University this year.

When the attack occurred, she was preparing for a test she was due to take the next day, but later it was announced that “any university activity, originally scheduled for Friday, had been cancelled and we were required not to go near faculty objects”.

The point in this disaster is that we would still end up this semester, because otherwise, I don't know what it would be like, emotionally, to go back to language”, she told Radio Free Europe.

Thursday's attack on Prague left 14 people dead. Albionians, the attack made him more suspicious of foreigners who passed the streets of Prague the next day. Now, she worries about returning to Pristina through Prague Airport.

The Aeroports always turn into a very scary area after a massive attack on a public space. Especially if you are in a top center of Central or Western Europe. I am still concerned about frequenting public spaces with many people, but I believe security measures have been taken and indeed, he was and remains an isolated” case, she said.

What happened?

After the attack, police took protective measures, aimed at schools, hospitals and cultural and sports events. The preventive measures will be in effect by 1 January. Long arms police officials have been deployed on the street, Czech police said.

We have no information about concrete threats. All of this is a precaution, a signal that we're here and we're about”, Czech police said through a release published on X, formerly known as Twitter.

On the morning of December 21, police had received information that a young man from the town of Hostouns in the vicinity of Prague was heading toward the Czech capital and was planning to commit suicide. The authorities immediately launched a search during which they discovered his father's body in their home. The attacker, later identified as David K., was 24 years old, had access to several weapons, including AR-15 rifles, and had no criminal past.

As chief of police Martin Vondrasek later said, police went to one of the objects of Carl's University Faculty of Philosophy, where he studied and where he was supposed to attend a lecture that day.

David K., however, went to the university's main building, located in a tourist area of Prague, went inside and opened fire. He killed 14 people and injured 25 others. One person died in the hospital and 13 at the scene, authorities said.

According to the Health Ministry, 27 people have been hospitalized, most of them with gunshot wounds. Of them, 12 are in serious condition, and at least one of them is in critical condition.

Prague Police Director Petr Macek said the attacker killed himself when police approached him on the balcony of the building.

He also said authorities found ammunition in the faculty corridors and believe the police's rapid reaction prevents greater bloodshed. Twenty-one minutes passed from the first signal of shooting to the attacker's death. Meanwhile, police said that according to ballistic tests, the weapon found at the attacker's house corresponded to the weapons he used at the university and the gun that was used to kill two people in a forest in Prague for the preliminary weekend.

On the day of the massacre, a large number of people, including Czech Prime Minister Petr Fiala, honoured the victims, lighting candles and placing flower wreaths near the university building.

“We are here to support our colleagues”, student Daniel Broz told Reuters. At the time of the attack, he wasn't in college.

The “was surreal, separately because as a check I've never experienced such an event”.

Carl's University has canceled all the speeches.

The Czech Republic has a population of 10,09 million, and almost 300,000 have weapons. But mass shooting is rare in this country.

State leaders have called on citizens not to spread false news and disinformations on social networks and to be careful about the content they distribute. Police have said they have recorded several cases where people are supposed to be inspired by this horrible act, they want to do the same”. Police said a woman has sought to buy weapons to do the same. She has been arrested while police have asked citizens to be calm. / REL