'Blood all over the faculty' - eyewitnesses recount Prague attack

Prof Radek Samik was teaching a class at Charles University when a gunman entered the building and started shooting indiscriminately.

Stuck inside a room on the first floor, he suddenly heard "very clear", single gunshots.

Aware that something was very wrong, he and his students stayed in the classroom, unable to leave, while the gunman carried out the worst mass shooting in Czech history.

Fourteen people were killed, and a further 25 injured, some very seriously, police said.

In a classroom on a higher floor was Jakob Weizman, a journalist and student at the university.

He was sitting a language exam in a small room, accompanied by one teacher, when he heard "gunshots" and "screaming".

Five minutes later, the gunman tried to open their classroom door. "He was going through each classroom to see if people were there to shoot them," Mr Weizman told the Guardian.

The pair were eventually evacuated from the building by police. "As we were walking out, there was just blood all over the faculty."

Ahead of the evacuations, video footage posted on social media showed people dangling from the balcony ledge, before jumping several metres to escape the shooting.

Prof Radek said a student described to him how they had broken through a window to get out of the building.

"They had a problem opening the window... so they broke the window" to get out, he told the BBC. He said he saw people who had problems walking after jumping out.

Another university lecturer, Prof Sergey Medvedev was evacuated along with his students from the building's auditorium during the shooting.

"I was giving a lecture at that moment and at first didn't quite realise what happened because there were some sounds," he said.

"The students, I think, heard it better because I was so much concentrated on my talking, on my lecture. Then we stayed in the auditorium, we understood that something big is happening.

"There was nothing online yet, nothing in the Czech press and the networks. Then at some point the special operation groups went storming in."

He said security forces searched their room, before telling them to stay put inside. "Then one hour later another police squad broke in and then put us on the floor, briefly searched us then evacuated from the building."

The shooting began at around 15:00 local time (14:00 GMT) on Thursday at the Faculty of Arts building of Charles University off Jan Palach Square in the centre of the Czech capital.

The gunman opened fire in the corridors and classrooms of the building, before shooting himself as security forces closed in on him, police said.

The victims have been identified but not publicly named by police.

Among those injured are three foreigners - one Dutch person and two from the United Arab Emirates, the interior ministry said.

The gunman is thought to have killed his father at a separate location, police said.

He is also suspected of killing a a man in his 30s and his two-month-old daughter who were found dead in a forest on the outskirts of Prague on 15 December.