Gunman Kills Eight at Russian University

MOSCOW — A gunman opened fire on Monday on a Russian university campus, killing at least eight people and wounding 19, state media reported.

During the attack, students jumped from a second-floor window to escape a building on the campus of Perm State University, in the city of Perm, about 650 miles east of Moscow, video footage posted online showed. A state news agency, RIA Novosti, cited the Investigative Committee, a law enforcement agency, saying eight people had died.

The shooter, who was captured, was a student, RIA reported and there were no initial reports of involvement of other gunmen.

Once rare, school shootings have become more common in Russia in recent years. The violence on Monday was the second mass shooting at a school this year. In May, an attacker killed seven students and two school employees in Kazan, another provincial Russian city.

In 2018 at a college in Kerch, a town in Russian-occupied Crimea, 21 people were killed and 50 were wounded in a shooting. Other less lethal incidents in schools and colleges followed, including attacks with air guns and an ax attack in Ulan-Ude, a city in Siberia, that wounded a teacher.

Russia has strict gun ownership laws. Applicants for a firearm’s license must pass psychological exams and own a smoothbore shotgun for a trial period before obtaining a rifle. Pistol ownership is more tightly controlled, largely limited to those, such as retiring military officers, who are given a pistol as an award for their service.

After the school shooting in May, President Vladimir V. Putin said he had ordered a further tightening of Russia’s laws on civilian gun ownership.