Gavin Grey: UK correspondent on the fallout from the fatal mass shooting in Austria

Ten people have been killed in a high school shooting in the Austrian city of Graz in the country's deadliest shooting attack since World War Two.

Dozens more have been injured.

A 21-year-old former student - thought to be the gunman - is also dead.

UK correspondent Gavin Grey says the area has been 'devastated' by this attack - and a three-day period of mourning has begun. 

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Episode Transcript

Speaker 1 (00:00):
Devin Gray UK correspondents. Will I say, Kevin, Hi, there
have that right? So Austria, I've got three days of
national mourning yet.

Speaker 2 (00:07):
Yes, it's begun after a very emotional raw night as well.
In the second largest city in Austria called Gratz yesterday
it was the scene of a shooting in which ten
people were killed and the suspect themselves then killed themselves
in the school toilets and the area really completely devastated
by this Austrian nomally and extremely peaceful city. So the

(00:29):
three days of national morning has begun and in another
hour and ten minutes the minute silence will fall across
the nation as well, marking twenty four hours on from
the moment that the killing started at this school. The
motive still remains unknown. There's a report that the attacker
left a noted his home, but we haven't had the

(00:50):
details of that yet. We do still know that it
looks like there are eleven people still in the hospital,
some of them critically injured, so concerned for them of course,
and a big appeal for blood within that city as
well for the hospitals running short of that. Plus in
the main square of vigil overnight of candles. They have

(01:10):
all gathered from around the city there right through the
night to basically show their support for those who have
been affected by this and to remember those who have died.

Speaker 1 (01:21):
Now tell me about what's going on with the UK
Foreign Office staff who raised concerns.

Speaker 2 (01:27):
Yes, so an open well, not an open letter. It
was a letter written by staff roughly three hundred Foreign
Office staff and sent to the Foreign Secretary and it
basically said they called there was a quote stark disregard
for international law by Israel with their conduct in Gaza,
and they said they also profoundly disagreed with government policy.

(01:49):
And then the Foreign Office as shot back saying well,
if you do profoundly disagree, then you can always resign.
The Foreign Office says it's got sister, was in place
for staff to raise concerns and that the government had
quote rigorously applied international law in relation to the war
in Gaza. This government coming under a lot of pressure

(02:10):
both from ordinary people but from within as well, saying
look are we actually complying legally with what we're meant
to be doing here? And also just shouldn't we be
condemning Israel more than we are? There were sanctions announced
yesterday on two ministers in the Israeli government. But something
that's just not enough. We can't stand by and see
the scenes that we're seeing on our news nightly in

(02:32):
Gaza for this to carry on. But this is quite
a start warning to those civil servants, particularly at a
time when they're already being warned that they could really
be slimmed down in numbers under the government's drive for efficiency.

Speaker 1 (02:45):
Tell you what, Gevin Laura of the German is very
very excited about the trains running from London to Germany,
are you.

Speaker 2 (02:53):
Yes, this is a really good service that I'm hoping
will come in already. Of course, we do have our
regular trains that run under the English Channel from London
and we connect to Paris, Brussels and Amsterdam, and they
even go to the French Alps in the ski season.
But two new routes have been announced into Germany and Switzerland.

(03:17):
The travel time between London and Frankfurt will be about
five hours and five hours twenty to go to Geneva,
and there are questions over the expansion. The firm does
need to make sure it's got enough space for more
trains at its depot in East London. But the boss
of Eurostars saying there's strong demand for train travel across
Europe despite higher operational costs and inflation squeezing customer budgets.

(03:40):
One other fact that he didn't mention there is it's
often actually cheaper now to get on a flight than
it is to go for short hauled train journeys. But
that is something which perhaps over time with the increase
in oil, might change as well. Nevertheless, there are hopes
to get these new train lines up and running by
the early twenty thirties.

Speaker 1 (03:57):
Hi cool, Thank you very much, Kevin, appreciate it. Gevin
g Uk corresponding.

Speaker 2 (04:01):
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