Twelve people were killed and 13 injured when a gunman roamed a university campus in the capital of oil-rich Azerbaijan today.

The killer committed suicide after the shootings in the prestigious State Oil Academy in the Baku. A statement by Azerbaijan’s Interior Ministry and state prosecutors named him as Farda Gadyrov, a citizen of Georgia. There was no mention of any motive.

The dead included a security guard, cleaners, a faculty head, tutors and students, including two foreigners. Special forces troops entered the building after initial reports, later disproved, that hostages had been taken.

Mursal Gamidov, head of Baku’s ambulance service, said that the gunman appeared to be a student at the academy, which trains specialists to work in the oil industry.

Some of the victims receiving treatment at a Baku hospital described horrific scenes. Bekir Belek, a Turkish student, told CNN-Turk TV: “We were in an exam, we heard gunshots. We went out of the classroom in panic and saw a gunman opening fire on everyone. Three of my friends were shot.

“Everywhere was covered in blood, all corridors. There are many wounded. We were trying to escape but had to return when my friends were shot, we took them to hospital.”

Ilgar Mamedov, whose father was shot, said that the killer walked along the academy’s corridors shooting at the head of anyone he saw. Those who did not appear to have died from the first shot were hit again.

Abas Aliyev, another student, told reporters that he had seen the gunman move methodically up the stairs of the six-storey building, shooting at anyone he saw.

Azeri television showed pictures from inside the academy of victims face down on the floor in pools of blood. Students carried injured classmates out of the university building, where the steps were stained with blood.

Police and ambulance crews were seen carrying out the dead in body bags. Interfax news named one of the victims as Tamilla Azizova, 58, an academic and the mother of one of its journalists in Azerbaijan.

Azerbaijan, a mainly Muslim republic on the shores of the Caspian Sea, has a booming oil industry that has attracted billions of dollars in foreign investment from Western energy giants such as BP.

Graduates of the State Oil Academy have included: Vagit Alekperov, the president of Lukoil, Russia’s largest private oil company; Jose Eduardo dos Santos, the President of Angola; and Lavrenti Beria, Stalin’s notorious secret police chief.

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