KEY POINTS:
There have now been five school ground shootings in the past two years.
Overnight, seven children and a head teacher were killed when Pekka Eric Auvinen opened fire at a school in southern Finland. The 18-year-old died later in hospital after shooting himself in the head.
Here are details of some of the major shootings inside schools and universities around the world in recent years:
March 1996 - BRITAIN: A gunman burst into a primary school in Dunblane in Scotland and shot dead 16 children and their teacher before killing himself.
March 1997 - YEMEN: A man with an assault rifle attacked hundreds of pupils at two schools in Sanaa, killing six children and two others. He was sentenced to death the next day.
March 1998 - USA: At Westside Middle School in Jonesboro, Arkansas, two boys aged 13 and 11 set off the fire alarm and killed four students and a teacher as they left the school.
May 1998 - USA: - In Springfield, Oregon, a student opened fire in Thurston High School, killing two students and injuring 22. The boy's parents were later found slain in their home.
April 1999 - USA: Two student gunmen killed 12 other students and a teacher at Columbine High School in Littleton, Colorado, before killing themselves.
June 2001 - JAPAN: Mamoru Takuma, armed with a kitchen knife, entered the Ikeda Elementary School near Osaka and killed eight children. Takuma was executed in September 2004.
Jan 2002 - USA: A student who had been dismissed from the Appalachian School of Law in Grundy, Virginia, killed the dean, a professor and a student, and wounded three others.
Feb 2002 - GERMANY: In Freising, in Bavaria, a former student thrown out of trade school shot three people before killing himself. Another teacher was injured.
April 26, 2002 - GERMANY: In Erfurt, eastern Germany, a gunman opened fire after he said he was not going to take a maths test. A total of 18 people died, including the assailant.
Sept 1, 2004 - RUSSIA: 333 hostages - at least 186 of them children - died in a chaotic storming of School No 1 in Beslan, after it was seized by rebels demanding Chechen independence.
March 21, 2005 - USA: A 16-year-old high school student shot dead five students, a teacher and a security guard at a school at Minnesota's Red Lake Indian Reservation. He had also killed his grandfather and his grandfather's companion.
Sept 13, 2006 - CANADA: Kimveer Gill opened fire on the street and inside the college in Montreal's Dawson College, killing one student and injuring 19 others. Gill killed himself after a battle with police.
Oct 2, 2006 - USA: Charles Carl Roberts, a dairy truck driver with a grudge, attacked a one-room Amish school in rural Pennsylvania, He shot 10 girls, killing five of them, before killing himself.
Nov 20, 2006 - GERMANY: An 18-year-old former pupil opened fire after storming the Scholl school in the town of Emsdetten. Eleven people were wounded before he committed suicide.
April 16, 2007 - USA: A gunmen killed 32 people and wounded 15 others at Virginia Tech University in the deadliest campus shooting in US history.
- REUTERS
