7 killed in mass shooting in southern Brazil school

SUZANO, Brazil — Two masked men armed with guns, knives, axes and crossbows descended on a school in southern Brazil on Wednesday, killing five students and two adults before taking their own lives, authorities said.

The men, identified as former students at the school in a suburb of Sao Paulo, also shot and killed the owner of a used car business nearby before launching the attack on the school, authorities said.

Besides the five students, the dead included a teacher and a school administrator, said Joao Camilo Pires de Campos, the state’s public secretary. Nine others were wounded in the school attack and hospitalized, he said.

“This is the saddest day of my life,” de Campos said, speaking to reporters outside the school in the Sao Paulo suburb of Suzano.

Authorities identified the attackers as 17-year-old Guilherme Taucci Monteiro and 25-year-old Henrique de Castro.

“The big question is: What was the motivation of these former students?” de Castro said.

Monteiro opened fire with a .38 caliber handgun and de Castro used a crossbow, de Campos said, adding that forensics would determine how the victims died.

The attackers were also carrying Molotov cocktails, knives and axes, authorities said

The attackers were trying to force their way inside a room at the back of the school where many students were hiding when police arrived. Instead of facing police, they turned their weapons on themselves, authorities said.

Latin America’s most populous nation has the largest number of annual homicides in the world, but school shootings are rare.

Mauricio Savarese and Anna Jean Kaiser are Associated Press writers.