Politicians, two reporters killed in Finland shooting

Helsinki: An armed assailant in a small Finish town on Sunday shot dead three women, including a local council official when they were leaving a restaurant, police said.

The municipal council head and two local journalists were also killed on Saturday night in the town of Imatra by a man who was swiftly arrested, SST news agency said.

A police official said, the 23-year-old suspect, who was armed with a shotgun, already had a record of violent crime.

The suspect was interrogated on Sunday but the motive for the attack remained unclear and the attacker could have picked his victims at random, investigators said.

Finland has relatively low crime rates compared to other European nations but it has one of the biggest gun ownership rates in the world.

It was confirmed by the town mayor Pertti Lintunen that the victim was social-democrat council leader Tiina Wilen-Jappinen, who was in her 50s.

The names of the murdered journalists were not revealed.

Imatra is a small lakeside town of 17,000 people in southeastern Finland, just a few kilometres from the Russian border.

A "Small Arms Survey" carried out by the Graduate Institute of International and Development Studies in Geneva, found Finland fourth in the civilian gun-ownership ranks behind the United States, Yemen and Switzerland.

Imatra authorities said via the internet that psychological support was being made available to local residents.