By KAREL JANICEK
A man opened fire Tuesday in a restaurant in the Czech Republic, an attack that left at least eight people dead, the town’s mayor said. It was the worst shooting attack in the country’s history.
Patrik Kuncar, mayor of the southeastern town of Uhersky Brod, said the gunman, a local man around 60 years old, was among the dead after killing himself. A waitress from the restaurant was hospitalized, he said.
The town of 17,000 lies 300 kilometers (185 miles) southeast of Prague, the Czech capital, and is home to the Ceska Zbrojovka gun plant.
Czech public radio said the gunman called a local television station before the attack, complaining that police were not solving his problems and threatening that he will “take things into his hands.”
Interior Minister Milan Chovanec, who was also quoted by Czech media outlets as saying that eight people had been killed, headed to the scene by helicopter.
“According to available information, it was not a terrorist attack,” Chovanec said in a tweet.
The Czech Republic has strict gun control laws but hunting is popular in the eastern European nation.
“I am shocked by the tragic attack in Uhersky Brod,” Prime Minister Bohuslav Sobotka said in a statement while on a trip to South Korea. He offered his condolences to the relatives of the victims.
The Czech Republic became an independent nation in 1993 after the split of Czechoslovakia.
