Pupils are evacuated from the Jokela high school in Tuusula, southern Finland, where a campus shooting happened yesterday. AP

A teacher at Jokela High School said the gunman was one of its pupils.

"At this moment its seven (deaths) or more, higher," said Dr Eero Hirvensalo, the head of the medical response team, adding it was unclear whether the gunman was among them.

The YouTube video, set to hard-driving music, shows a still photo of a school that appears to be Jokela High School. The photo then fragments to reveal a red-tinted picture of a man pointing a gun at the camera.

The profile contained a text calling for a "revolution against the system."

Three people were wounded in the shooting, according to early reports. One of those shot was the school principal, said Tuula Panula, spokeswoman for the Tuusula municipality, some 60 km from the Finnish capital Helsinki.

"He (the gunman) was moving systematically through the school hallways, knocking on the doors and shooting through the doors," Kim Kiuru, a teacher at the school, said at the scene.

"It felt unreal, a pupil I have taught myself was running towards me, screaming, a pistol in his hand."

The YouTube video is entitled "Jokela High School Massacre - 11/7/2007" and was posted by a user called Sturmgeist89. "Sturmgeist" means storm spirit in German.

Police surrounded the school and a city official announced shortly before 1400 GMT that the siege was over.

Junior Constable Olli Laine said earlier police had evacuated students from the building, which houses both a middle and a high school.

Kiuru, who was teaching a grade 8 class when the shooting started, said he helped his pupils escape the building through the classroom windows.

Kiuru said the principal announced over the public address system just before noon that all students should remain in their classrooms.

Prime Minister Matti Vanhanen described the situation as "extremely tragic" and said the government would hold an emergency meeting.

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 including himself and six others in a bomb blast at a shopping mall in Helsinki.

Agencies

(China Daily 11/08/2007 page7)