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Factbox-Mass shootings in Europe in the past 40 years
Published by Global Banking & Finance Review®
Posted on June 10, 2025
5 min readLast updated: January 23, 2026
Global Banking & Finance Review®
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Published by Global Banking & Finance Review®
Posted on June 10, 2025
5 min readLast updated: January 23, 2026
This article outlines a timeline of major mass shootings in Europe over the past 40 years, highlighting key incidents and their impacts.
MADRID (Reuters) -A gunman killed at least nine people at a secondary school in the southern Austrian city of Graz on Tuesday, in the worst school shooting in the country's modern history.
Here is a timeline of some of the worst shooting incidents in Europe in the past four decades:
May 1987 - BELGIUM - Michael Van Wijnendaele kills seven people in Belgium, then shoots himself as police try to get him to surrender.
August 1987 - BRITAIN - Michael Ryan, a 27-year-old gun fanatic, rampages through the English town of Hungerford, killing 16 people and wounding 11 before shooting himself.
July 1989 - FRANCE - A French farmer shoots and kills 14 people including members of his family in the village of Luxiol, near the Swiss border. He is wounded and captured by police.
September 1995 - FRANCE - A 16-year-old youth runs amok with a rifle in the town of Cuers, killing 15 people and then himself after an argument with his parents.
March 1996 - BRITAIN - Thomas Hamilton bursts into a primary school in the Scottish town of Dunblane and shoots dead 16 children and their teacher before killing himself.
April 2002 - GERMANY - Robert Steinhauser, 19, opens fire in Erfurt after saying he was not going to take a maths test. He kills 12 teachers, a secretary, two pupils and a policeman at the Gutenberg Gymnasium, before killing himself.
September 2004 - RUSSIA - More than 300 hostages - half of them children - die at School No.1 in the city of Beslan in North Ossetia after it is seized by rebels demanding Chechen independence and an immediate end to the war there. Many of the dead were killed when the school was stormed.
November 2007 - FINLAND - Pekka-Eric Auvinen kills six fellow students, the school nurse, the principal and himself with a handgun at the Jokela High School near Helsinki.
September 2008 - FINLAND - Student Matti Saari opens fire in a vocational school in Kauhajoki in northwest Finland, killing nine other students and one male staff member before killing himself.
March 2009 - GERMANY - A 17-year-old gunman kills nine students and three teachers at a school near Stuttgart and another person at a nearby clinic. He is later killed in a shoot-out with police. Two passers-by are also killed, bringing the death toll to 16, including the gunman.
June 2010 - BRITAIN - Derrick Bird opens fire on people in towns across the rural county of Cumbria. Twelve people are killed and 11 injured. Bird also kills himself.
August 2010 - SLOVAKIA - A gunman shoots dead six members of a Roma family and another woman in the Slovak capital Bratislava before killing himself. Fourteen more people are wounded.
April 2011 - NETHERLANDS - Tristan van der Vlis opens fire in the Ridderhof mall in Alphen aan den Rijn, south of Amsterdam, killing six before turning the gun on himself.
July 2011 - NORWAY - Anders Behring Breivik kills 77 people when he plants a car bomb that kills eight people at an Oslo government building, then shoots dead 69 more, most of them teenagers, at an island summer camp of the ruling Labour Party's youth wing.
November 2015 - FRANCE - Islamist attackers in Paris armed with guns and bombs target the Bataclan music hall, six bars and restaurants, and the perimeter of the Stade de France sports stadium just outside the French capital, killing 130 people - including 90 concertgoers in the Bataclan - and injuring hundreds.
July 2016 - GERMANY - An 18-year-old German-Iranian man who is obsessed with mass killings kills at least nine people in Munich.
March 2023 - GERMANY - A gunman in Hamburg shoots dead six people before killing himself at a Jehovah's Witness worship hall. Eight other people were wounded, including a seven-months pregnant woman, who lost her unborn daughter.
May 2023 - SERBIA - A 13-year-old boy guns down eight fellow pupils and a security guard in a Belgrade school. Two days later, a gunman kills eight people and wounds 14 others in a village near the Serbian capital. Both suspects are arrested.
December 2023 - CZECH REPUBLIC - A Czech student shoots dead his father then kills 14 people at his Prague university. The gunman, killed at the scene possibly by one of his own bullets, is also suspected in the killings of another man and his two-month-old daughter who were found shot dead in woods in a village outside Prague, the week before.
March 2024 - RUSSIA - Armed men burst into the Crocus City Hall concert venue near Moscow on Friday, killing at least 139 people and wounding 182. Islamic State, the militant group that once sought control over swathes of Iraq and Syria, claims responsibility for the attack.
July 2024 - CROATIA - A gunman enters a nursing home in northwestern Croatia, shooting dead six people, including his mother, and injuring five others.
February 2025 - SWEDEN - A gunman kills 11 people, including himself, at an adult education centre in central Sweden in the country's deadliest mass shooting.
June 2025 - AUSTRIA - A lone gunman enters a secondary school in the southern city of Graz and opens fire, killing at least nine people. The attacker also dies, police said.
(Compiled by Mark John and Charlie DevereuxEditing by Peter Graff)
The worst school shooting in Austria's modern history occurred in Graz, where a gunman killed at least nine people.
More than 300 hostages died during the Beslan school siege, half of whom were children.
Germany experienced several mass shootings, including a 2016 incident in Munich where at least nine people were killed and a 2023 shooting in Hamburg that resulted in six deaths.
In 2011, Anders Behring Breivik killed 77 people in Norway, first with a car bomb in Oslo and then by shooting teenagers at a nearby island.
In May 2023, a 13-year-old boy shot eight fellow pupils and a security guard in a Belgrade school, marking a tragic event in the country's history.
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