A 12-year-old suspect has been taken into custody after three other 12-year-olds were shot and wounded at a school in Finland.

The injured were taken to hospital, a police spokesperson told Reuters. No further details were immediately available.

The shooting took place at the Viertola school in Vantaa, a suburb of the capital, Helsinki. The school has about 800 pupils from first to ninth grade and a staff of 90 people, according to the local municipality.

“The immediate danger is over,” the school’s principal, Sari Laasila, told Reuters, declining to comment further on the incident.

The Finnish interior minister, Mari Rantanen, posted on X: “The day started in a horrifying way. There has been a shooting incident at the Viertola school in Vantaa. I can only imagine the pain and worry that many families are experiencing at the moment. The suspected perpetrator has been caught.”

Previous school shootings in Finland have put a harsh focus on the country’s gun policy. In 2007, Pekka-Eric Auvinen shot and killed six students, a school nurse, the principal and himself using a handgun at Jokela high school near Helsinki.

In 2008, another student, Matti Saari, opened fire at a vocational school in Kauhajoki, in north-west Finland. He killed nine students and one staff member before turning the gun on himself.

Finland tightened its gun legislation in 2010, introducing an aptitude test for all firearms licence applicants. The age limit for applicants was changed to 20 from 18.

There are more than 1.5m licensed firearms and about 430,000 licence holders in the nation of 5.6 million people, where hunting and target shooting are popular activities.