Police stormed an apartment Monday and killed a man after he fired shots at a kindergarten in Bashkortostan, shattering a window of a gym where children were playing and lightly wounding a teacher who was hit by flying glass, police and media reports said.
The man, in his early 50s, fired several shots with a hunting rifle from a window of his apartment in the town of Salavat, said police in the Bashkortostan republic, located 1,500 kilometers southeast of Moscow.
Six bullets hit the window of the gym and a shard of glass struck a teacher in the stomach as she tried to get the children out of the room, according to the website Lifenews.ru, a tabloid that has close ties to law enforcement agencies.
Police said that officers surrounded the gunman's home and demanded he surrender, but he refused and opened fire when police stormed his apartment. He was killed by return fire from police, they said.
Mass shootings are not common in Russia, but a 30-year-old lawyer fatally shot five colleagues at his pharmaceutical firm in Moscow Nov. 7 in what appeared to be a drunken rampage after his girlfriend left him.
The sale of combat weapons is illegal in Russia, and the November shooting prompted the Interior Ministry to consider toughening existing gun legislation. Hunting rifles can be acquired with a permit.
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