{"id":62478,"date":"2026-04-16T15:39:13","date_gmt":"2026-04-16T15:39:13","guid":{"rendered":"https:\/\/www.europesays.com\/dk\/62478\/"},"modified":"2026-04-16T15:39:13","modified_gmt":"2026-04-16T15:39:13","slug":"outpouring-of-grief-as-turkey-buries-school-shooting-victims","status":"publish","type":"post","link":"https:\/\/www.europesays.com\/dk\/62478\/","title":{"rendered":"Outpouring of grief as Turkey buries school shooting victims"},"content":{"rendered":"

\"\"<\/a><\/p>\n

Crowds gathered for the funerals of eight children and a teacher in southern Turkey on Thursday, killed when a 14-year-old opened fire at a school, in a crime that has plunged the country into shock and the community into grief, Agence France-Presse reported.<\/p>\n

As family members and mourners gathered around coffins draped with the Turkish flag in the province of Kahramanmara\u015f, people also placed roses on the steps of the school that was attacked, with locals still reeling at what unfolded a day earlier when a teenage attacker arrived at the building with five guns and opened fire.<\/p>\n

\u201cWe have tremendous pain,\u201d said Vezir Y\u00fccel, whose son played football in the same academy as 10-year-old Bayram Nabi \u015ei\u015fik, one of the students killed at school on Wednesday.<\/p>\n

\u201cHe was such a good kid, respectful and very hardworking,\u201d he told Agence France-Presse outside the mosque after the funerals. His 11-year-old son Yusuf, standing next to him, was shaking and crying.<\/p>\n

Authorities said nine people died in Wednesday\u2019s attack, eight children aged 10 and 11 and their teacher, a day after an ex-student opened fire in his former high school in the southeastern province of \u015eanl\u0131urfa, leaving 16 injured.<\/p>\n

The suspects in both cases were also killed, authorities said, with the first attacker taking his own life when cornered by police.<\/p>\n

\u201cI feel terrible. In front of my eyes, so many children were jumping, coming out injured, covered in blood,\u201d said one woman who lives near the school attacked on Wednesday, telling AFP she had followed what happened from her balcony.<\/p>\n

Another local who gave his name as Ahmet, 16, said his sister knew the attacker as she went to the same school with him, though she hadn\u2019t been in class on Wednesday.<\/p>\n

\u201cAllah protected her. But she\u2019s shocked,\u201d he said. \u201cShe knows the shooter.\u201d<\/p>\n

Some 3,500 teachers gathered in Ankara to call for the education minister to quit, some shouting, \u201cBlood has stained my profession\u201d and others chanting, \u201cWhere were you while the children were dying?\u201d<\/p>\n

In the build-up to the funerals, police arrested dozens of web users for praising the shooters or spreading misinformation and blocked hundreds of social media accounts.<\/p>\n

Mass shootings are rare in Turkey, and the incidents provoked shock across the country, with those living in Kahramanmara\u015f still shaken on Thursday.<\/p>\n

\u201cChildren jumped out of the window and came out injured,\u201d an eyewitness who lives near school told AFP.<\/p>\n

\u201cAfter that, I couldn\u2019t look anymore. I didn\u2019t send my children to school that day,\u201d said the woman, who did not want to be identified.<\/p>\n

Schools will remain closed in Kahramanmara\u015f on Thursday and Friday.<\/p>\n

\u2018Isolated act\u2019<\/p>\n

Police said the 14-year-old attacker had referenced a mass shooter in the United States in a photo on his WhatsApp profile.<\/p>\n

\u201cInitial findings from the investigation revealed that the perpetrator used an image on his WhatsApp profile referencing Elliot Rodger, who carried out an attack in the United States in 2014,\u201d the police said in a statement.<\/p>\n

Rodger killed six people on the campus of the University of California, Santa Barbara, before taking his own life.<\/p>\n

According to initial findings, no link to terrorism has been established in Wednesday\u2019s shooting, both the police and the prosecutors said.<\/p>\n

\u201cThis appears to be an isolated act,\u201d the police added.<\/p>\n

President Recep Tayyip Erdo\u011fan expressed sorrow over Wednesday\u2019s \u201ctragic attack\u201d and said the incident would be fully investigated.<\/p>\n","protected":false},"excerpt":{"rendered":"Crowds gathered for the funerals of eight children and a teacher in southern Turkey on Thursday, killed when…\n","protected":false},"author":2,"featured_media":62479,"comment_status":"","ping_status":"","sticky":false,"template":"","format":"standard","meta":{"footnotes":""},"categories":[83],"tags":[34331,34332,34305,34333,34306,34307,131,132,155],"class_list":{"0":"post-62478","1":"post","2":"type-post","3":"status-publish","4":"format-standard","5":"has-post-thumbnail","7":"category-stockholm","8":"tag-bayram-nabi-sisik","9":"tag-elliot-rodger","10":"tag-kahramanmaras-school-shooting","11":"tag-mass-shooting","12":"tag-sanliurfa-school-shooting","13":"tag-school-shooting","14":"tag-stockholm","15":"tag-sweden","16":"tag-turkey"},"share_on_mastodon":{"url":"https:\/\/pubeurope.com\/@dk\/116415140521652926","error":""},"_links":{"self":[{"href":"https:\/\/www.europesays.com\/dk\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts\/62478","targetHints":{"allow":["GET"]}}],"collection":[{"href":"https:\/\/www.europesays.com\/dk\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts"}],"about":[{"href":"https:\/\/www.europesays.com\/dk\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/types\/post"}],"author":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/www.europesays.com\/dk\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/users\/2"}],"replies":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/www.europesays.com\/dk\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/comments?post=62478"}],"version-history":[{"count":0,"href":"https:\/\/www.europesays.com\/dk\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts\/62478\/revisions"}],"wp:featuredmedia":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/www.europesays.com\/dk\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/media\/62479"}],"wp:attachment":[{"href":"https:\/\/www.europesays.com\/dk\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/media?parent=62478"}],"wp:term":[{"taxonomy":"category","embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/www.europesays.com\/dk\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/categories?post=62478"},{"taxonomy":"post_tag","embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/www.europesays.com\/dk\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/tags?post=62478"}],"curies":[{"name":"wp","href":"https:\/\/api.w.org\/{rel}","templated":true}]}}