WORLD : 7 Die in Greenland’s Bloodiest Mass Shooting; Suspect Held

A rifle-toting young man opened fire at a boarding house complex in an Eskimo hamlet, killing seven people and seriously wounding one other in Greenland’s bloodiest mass shooting, police said today.

The 18-year-old suspect, whose name was not released, was in custody and has confessed to Monday’s shooting spree in Narsaq, a southern Greenland town of almost 2,000 people 250 miles south of the island’s capital of Nuuk, police inspector Lars Heilman said.

Greenland, the world’s largest island, has an overwhelmingly Inuit, or Eskimo, population of 54,000. The suspect and the victims are all believed to be Inuit.

“Those who were killed and those wounded were all shot in the head with a rifle,” Heilman said. “It appears there had been a party, but we have no immediate indication as to the motive for the killings.”

Those killed were three men, ages 18, 33 and 34, and four women, ages 18, 19, 26 and 29. A 22-year-old man was hospitalized in stable condition with head wounds.