A 12-year-old child has passed away and two others have been seriously injured in a shooting at a school in Finland.
According to police in the nordic nation, all three victims were aged 12 and a suspect - the same age - has been arrested, BBC News reported.
Speaking to local media, parents stated that the shooting occurred in a classroom at Viertola school in Vantaa - a Finnish city north of the country's capital Helsinki.
Police responded to the shooting at 9:08AM local time and urged locals to stay indoors.
Students had returned to school in Vantaa on Tuesday (April 2) after the long Easter weekend.
Law enforcement in the country said the suspect had run away after the fatal ordeal and was later detained "in a calm manner" on the opposite side of a local river in a district of northern Helsinki.
They confirmed that he had been armed with a firearm which they had taken from him.
Children were told to stay in their classrooms following the attack.
Prime Minister Petteri Orpo has since described the incident as deeply upsetting and said his thoughts were with the victims and their loved ones as well as those at the school at the time of the incident.
Vantaa is Finland's fourth largest city with about 240,000 residents.
Viertola school has 800 students between the ages of seven and 16 on two separate sites, with around 90 staff members. The shooting occurred at the school's Jokiranta site where students between the ages of nine and 13 attend.
After the initial reports of the shooting emerged, concerned parents arrived at the school to collect their children, with the building still cordoned off.
Back in 2007 and 2008, the country saw two fatal school shootings just months apart.
In 2007, an 18-year-old student shot dead six fellow students, the school nurse and the principal in the small town of Jokela north of Helsinki. The year after, a student - armed with a with a semi-automatic rifle - shot dead nine pupils and a teacher at a polytechnic in the western town of Kauhajoki.
The incidents resulted in stricter gun legislation, requiring gun owners to be aged 18 or over. However, anyone over the age of 15 is able to apply for a permit to use someone else's firearm.
Finland is home to many keen hunters and firearm enthusiasts and has 430,000 licensed gun owners out of a population of just 5.5 million, per government statistics. There is no limit to the number of firearms that can be owned by one person and according to the interior ministry, more than 1.5 million are in circulation.
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