Mexico shooting: 15-year-old who opened fire on classmates is named

The 15-year-old boy who opened fire at a private school in Mexico, shooting four people before turning the gun on himself, has been named.

The teenager was named by Nuevo Leon state governor Jaime Rodriguez as Federico Guevara, who was believed to have been suffering from depression.

Guevara was a student at the bilingual Colegio Americano del Noreste,in Monterray, where the attack took place, although his identity has not been confirmed by the authorities as yet.

Security footage from the school showed the teenager firing shots at students who were seated, as well as a female teacher. Several of the students were shot at point-blank range, Reuters reported.

The teenager then aimed the gun at his head, but had run out of bullets and reloaded his weapon before shooting himself dead.

Students who had been in the classroom during the shooting fled after the teen shot himself, while medical services raced to the scene.

Mexican President Enrique Pena Nieto wrote on Twitter: "As a father and as president, what happened this morning at a school in Monterrey hurts me very much."

The students shot in the attack have not yet been identified and the motive behind the shooting remains unknown.

School shootings are relatively rare in Mexico to the extent that a bag checking programme at Colegio Noreste had fallen into disuse. A previous police programme had seen students' bags checked at the building's entrances.

On 16 January a gunman killed five and wounded nine others at the Blue Parrot nightclub in the Playa del Carmen resort in another mass shooting.