The perpetrators of Finland’s two classroom massacres conspired a year ago and encouraged each other to slaughter their schoolmates, a friend said yesterday. They also played a violent online computer game together, according to local press reports.

Pekka-Erik Auvinen, who killed eight pupils and staff at Jokela near Helsinki last November , was said to have encouraged Matti Saari, who shot ten dead this week in the town of Kauhajoki. “If I can’t do it I know you can make it,” he wrote.

The two played the video game Battlefield 2, according to a computer gamer who spoke to the Finnish tabloid Iltalehti. Named only as Ville, he claimed to have played with them online. Auvinen and Saari were on the same team and communicated through headsets over the internet during the game.

The newspaper said that Saari was discharged from the Army after one month in 2006 because of a dangerous shooting incident. An army recruit said: “He wasn’t very good at shooting and didn’t really know how to handle a gun. One day we had to go into the woods and only the people at the front were supposed to shoot.

“He shot from the back and everybody was very scared. They decided he wasn’t suitable for the Army.”

Saari eventually turned his own Walther .22 pistol on himself after his killing spree on Tuesday. Only three students, all female, managed to escape the carnage in classroom 3 at Kauhajoki college.

Police said the survivors told them that Saari, 22, boasted how much he was enjoying himself as he fired repeatedly at classmates, killing a teacher, eight female students and one male student.

The disclosure emerged as police arrested several students for sending text messages warning of copycat shootings, which spread panic through classrooms across the country. Five students were arrested and two schools evacuated after a spate of threats, a phenomenon also seen after the Jokela killings. Police arrested a 16-year-old boy in neighbouring Sweden after spotting a suspicious clip he had posted on YouTube.

Mikko Paatero, Finland’s National Police Commissioner, gave warning that there was a real danger of more school shootings. “I really fear it is possible,” he told Finnish television.

Police said that text message threats were being sent around Kauhajoki, creating panic among students. They were already nervous about gossip that Saari had claimed he would not be the last gunman. A stream of youngsters, many in tears, went to leave candles and messages outside the college yesterday and several said they were too scared to return when classes restarted on Monday.

Mija Ojanen, a 17-year-old student at the college, said: “I don’t want to go to that school any more and lots of my friends don’t want to either.” An unnamed friend of Saari’s former girlfriend told Finnish television that he was in touch with Auvinen shortly before the Jokela killings. Police have already disclosed that Saari bought his Walther .22 pistol from the same gunstore in Jokela as Auvinen.

Jari Neulaniemi, the head of the police investigation, said that he suspected the two killers were in touch but had not yet found firm evidence. Saari’s computer had been seized but not yet thoroughly examined, he added. A friend of Saari’s, named only as Rauno, told the Finnish weekly magazine 7 Päivää that the killer called him shortly after carrying out the shootings. “We greeted each other quite normally, and I asked him in the normal way what he was up to,” said Rauno.

“He announced in a perfectly calm voice that he had shot ten people at the school and he was calling to say goodbye.” Rauno said that he then asked Saari several times to repeat what he had just said, which he did perfectly calmly. He then asked Rauno to arrange for his body to be cremated. “Finally, he said something like ‘Goodbye, mate’.”

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