Flags flew at half-mast across Finland on Thursday in mourning for eight people killed by an 18-year-old gunman at a school hours after he posted a video on YouTube predicting a massacre there.

Six pupils of Jokela High School, along with the school's principal and its nurse, were killed when student Pekka-Eric Auvinen opened fire with a .22 caliber handgun in the middle of the school day. He then shot himself in the head.

The gunman, who had a keen interest in war history and extremist movements, died late on Wednesday in hospital.

Police said on Thursday that one of the dead was the nurse at the school in Tuusula municipality, a town of 35,000 some 60 km (40 miles) from Helsinki. Initially, they had believed seven students and one staff member had been killed.

Merja Launonen, a mother of a 14-year-old who had been at the school during the shooting, said she would not make her daughter go back. She is afraid of that school. I cannot force her to go there, Launonen said.

Many children hid in classrooms for hours after the shooting, fearing the gunman could still threaten them.

Such a tragedy in the normally peaceful Nordic nation should make Finland reconsider its campaign against European Union plans to tighten gun ownership laws for youngsters, a senior cabinet member told Reuters.

In my opinion we should reconsider this very seriously, Trade Minister Mauri Pekkarinen said. I believe we have to critically think over Finland's position one more time. I am ready to take this up in the government.

Although the country has the world's third-highest per capita gun ownership, deadly shootings are rare.

Auvinen, who only last month obtained the permit for the gun he used in the shooting, walked systematically through the school's corridors, firing into classroom after classroom, according to a teacher at the school.

The YouTube video by Auvinen, set to a hard-driving song called Stray Bullet, shows a still photo of what appears to be Jokela High School. The photo breaks apart to reveal a red-tinted picture of a man pointing a handgun at the camera.

The clip, which police said was made by the gunman, is entitled Jokela High School Massacre - 11/7/2007.

PHONE MESSAGES

Across Finland, flags flew at half-mast and many churches planned services to remember the victims.

People are feeling down and are quiet. It's crazy that this kid copied what has been done in the U.S., said Pekka Tuominen of Tuusula.

Tech-savvy Finns set up mobile telephone text message chains to organize memorials for the victims.

In the evening at 6 p.m., we are lighting a candle in the kitchen window to remember the victims of school killings. I hope you will join us to remember young pupils and the teacher, who only on Wednesday morning believed in the future, the message read.

The last major attack in Finland occurred in 2002 when a man killed himself and six others in a bomb blast at a shopping mall in Helsinki. In 1989 a 14-year-old pupil shot dead two middle-school children in Rauma, western Finland.

Maybe we were living in a bubble until now and this is a wake-up call. Our country is no more perfect than any other one ...we can't pretend it is, Helsinki resident Mikko Pyysalo said.

(Additional reporting by Agnieszka Flak, Sami Torma, Sakari Suoninen; editing by Dominic Evans)

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