Finland’s president joined grievers at church in western Finland on Sunday morning for a memorial service for the victims of a school massacre in which 11 people died, including the gunman.
The ceremony in Kauhajoki — where the shooting took place last Tuesday — began with a group of musicians playing their cellos, after which the packed congregation that included President Tarja Halonen sang a hymn.
”The church in Kauhajoki has been a house for broken hearts since last Tuesday. The Kauhajoki tragedy has caused a sore loss for individual families and the whole nation,” Bishop Simo Peura said.
”All of us are needed to carry that sorrow,” he added.
The church service was being broadcast live on public radio and television.
Matti Saari, a 22-year-old culinary-arts student, marched into his vocational school in Kauhajoki on Tuesday morning and shot dead nine classmates and a teacher before setting the building on fire and turning his gun on himself.
The school massacre came less than a year after a strikingly similar shooting at a high school north of Helsinki in which nine people, including the killer, died. — AFP
