The killings in Kahramanmaras deepened national grief after two school shootings in Turkey in two days.
KAHRAMANMARAS, Turkey — Families in southeastern Turkey began burying victims on Thursday after a 14-year-old student opened fire at a middle school, killing eight children and a teacher in an attack that stunned the country.
The funerals turned a fast-moving crime investigation into a national moment of mourning. Officials were still sorting through evidence about how the teenager obtained several guns tied to his father and whether he had planned the shooting in advance. At the same time, teachers, parents and local officials were left facing a harder question: how two school attacks happened in Turkey on back-to-back days in places where many families had never imagined such violence.
The attack happened Wednesday at a middle school in Kahramanmaras’ Onikisubat district, where officials said the student opened fire in two classrooms. By the end of the day, authorities said eight students and one teacher were dead. Others were wounded, some seriously, and hospitals in the region received the injured as anxious relatives searched for information. The city, which suffered heavily in the 2023 earthquakes, again became the center of national mourning. By Thursday, mortuary vans were parked outside local facilities and funeral ceremonies began for the victims, many of them children about 11 years old. Images from the city showed families embracing, crying and walking beside coffins draped for burial.
Investigators said the suspect was 14 and had arrived armed with several pistols and extra magazines. Authorities said the firearms were linked to his father, who was later jailed pending trial as prosecutors examined how the boy got access to the weapons. Police said they found no early evidence of terrorism and were treating the shooting as an individual act. But that did not answer the central questions hanging over the case. Officials were still working to determine the attacker’s motive, whether he had received weapons training and exactly how he died after the shooting. Reports on Thursday pointed to evidence of prior planning, including a document found on his computer dated several days before the attack.
The shock was sharper because the Kahramanmaras attack followed another school shooting a day earlier in Siverek, in nearby Sanliurfa province. In that case, a former student used a shotgun to wound 16 people before killing himself, officials said. The victims there included students, teachers, a police officer and a canteen employee. Taken together, the two attacks broke the sense that schools in Turkey were largely insulated from the kind of repeated gun violence seen elsewhere. Officials stressed that school shootings remain rare in the country, but rarity offered little comfort to parents gathered outside school gates in two provinces over two days. The scale and timing of the attacks forced a broader public conversation about school security, gun storage and youth violence.
Authorities also moved to control the public response as the story spread. Turkish officials restricted the publication and broadcast of traumatic images and said coverage should rely on official statements. Police announced action against online accounts accused of glorifying the attacks, and investigators reviewed the suspect’s digital trail. In Ankara, teacher unions used the moment to demand closer scrutiny of conditions inside schools. During a protest outside the education ministry, union member Dilek Cakman said violence was itself a consequence of deeper failures and argued that officials needed serious research into what drives children toward crime. The demonstrations added another layer to the aftermath: grief was being joined by anger.
In Kahramanmaras, the human cost was plainest at the funerals. Families stood close together, some supported by relatives as they watched coffins carried out. Children who survived were left to return home without classmates and a teacher who had been part of their ordinary school day only hours earlier. Officials continued to speak in careful, limited terms, but the mood in the city went beyond statistics. The grief was personal, public and immediate. Even as investigators collected evidence and prosecutors prepared the next filings, the funerals made clear that the story would not be measured only by case documents or forensic reports, but by the empty desks left behind.
As of Friday, the investigation was still unfolding, with prosecutors reviewing forensic evidence, the suspect’s online activity and the role of his father in the handling of the weapons. Additional findings were expected as court and police officials released further updates in the days ahead.
Author note: Last updated April 17, 2026.