Watch video posted by the YouTube killer

A teenage gunman killed his headmistress and seven fellow pupils at a school in southern Finland today, hours after posting a chilling video on the YouTube website predicting the massacre.

Pekka-Eric Auvinen, 18, a pupil at Jokela high school in Tuusula, went on a rampage through classrooms before turning the gun on himself. He shot himself in the head but survived and was in an “extremely critical condition” in hospital last night, a police spokesman said.

The school shooting is thought to be unprecedented in Finland, where violent incidents are rare despite a high rate of gun ownership. In his YouTube postings and videos, Auvinen appeared to have similarities to the authors of some of the United States' worst massacres - including the shootings at Virginia Tech in April.

The video - which has been deleted - shows a still image of a school that appears to be the Jokela school. The photograph fragments to reveal a red-tinted picture of a man pointing a gun at the camera.

On his YouTube profile, posted under the name Sturmgeist89, Auvinen wrote: "I am prepared to fight and die for my cause. I, as a natural selector, will eliminate all who I see unfit, disgraces of human race and failures of natural selection."

Jan-Olav Nyholm, a local police officer, said that the killer came from a "very normal family" of four. "He has one brother," he said. "He had no problems in school."

Kim Kiuru, a teacher at the school, described how he first became aware of the situation at noon (10am GMT) when the headmaster announced over the public address system that all students should remain in their classrooms.

"I stayed in the corridor to listen to more instructions, having locked my classroom door. After that I saw the gunman running with what appeared to be a small-calibre handgun in his hand through the doors towards me, after which I escaped to the corridor downstairs and ran in the opposite direction.

"He was moving systematically through the school hallways, knocking on the doors and shooting through the doors. It felt unreal, a pupil I have taught myself was running towards me, screaming, a pistol in his hand."

Mr Kiuru escaped and shouted at his pupils, who were still in the classroom, to jump out of the windows to safety. "All of my pupils were saved," he said.

Police later said that eight people had died, seven of them students and the eighth the school principal, who has not been named.

Auvinen's name was appended to a "manifesto" posted on the internet that claims that "humanity is overrated" and that "it's time to put natural selection and survival of the fittest back on tracks".

The document, which is part of a collection of files including photographs of a young man posing with a pistol, purports to be signed by Auvinen, who lists his aliases as "NaturalSelector89, Natural Seclector, Sturmgeist89 and Sturmgeist".

Sturmgeist89, taken from the German for "Storm Spirit", is the name used by the author of the internet video. Sturmgeist's profile on YouTube, which is largely a rant about the state of humanity, concludes: "I am the law, judge and executioner. There is no higher authority than me."

Miro Lukinmaa, a student at the school, told the Finnish newspaper Iltalehti that the gunman had fired at pupils and at police. "Suddenly people began running and shots were heard and began raining down," he said. "I saw injured people lying in the corridor. We started to run and followed [the crowd] in a panic. Everyone was trying to squeeze through a narrow door."

Another student, Tuomas Hulkkonen, told Helsingin Sanomat that he had known the gunman for ten years. He said that the man had been acting oddly in recent days and had drawn pictures of guns.

Police officers, some armed with automatic weapons, surrounded the school and a city official announced shortly before 4pm (2pm GMT) that the siege was over. The last shot was fired at 12.04pm (10.04am GMT). The gunman fired a single shot at police, who did not return fire, local agencies reported.

Hundreds of pupils and staff were evacuated from the Jokela complex, which houses both an upper secondary school and a comprehensive school.

The operation involved about a hundred police and rescuers, some with automatic weapons and body armour.

Police told reporters that the suspect was a member of a gun club, had a licence for a handgun and had neither a criminal record nor a history of threatening behaviour.

Despite having the third-largest per capita ratio of handgun ownership in the world, violent incidents are rare at Finnish schools. According to Finnish media, there have been four stabbings at schools since 1999. None of these caused fatalities.

The last major attack in the country came in 2002 when a young man killed himself and six others in a bomb blast at a shopping mall in Helsinki.

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