Manama: The mass killing of employees in an education building in the southern region of Jazan has remained shrouded in mystery amid conflicting reports about its reasons.
Witnesses said that the man stormed the building with a machine gun and fired randomly at the people there, killing five on the spot. The sixth victim died later at the hospital.
Two more people were injured in the attack that occurred on Thursday at 2 pm. Mohammad Al Harbi, the spokesperson for the police in Jazan, said that the attacker was detained and that an investigation was launched to determine the reasons behind the mass killing.
A Red Crescent source was quoted by a news site as saying that the killing followed a brawl in the education office.
However, the reasons for the bloody attack have not been revealed yet, sparking wide speculation.
On Saturday, Saudi daily Okaz reported that the killer confessed that he had missed the man he wanted to kill, explaining that he was not in the building at the time of the attack.
The daily said the killer had only one target in his mind when he stormed the place, but failed to find him.
Quoting sources it did not identify, the daily said that the criminal and the would-be victim had a long-standing issue. No further details about the nature of the issue were reported.
The man who escaped the attack returned to the office shortly after the attack, it added.
Other reports said the attack occurred because the killer had an issue with the education office after they transferred him from his former school to a new one without his approval and without proper justifications.
However, sources told Saudi daily Al Riyadh that the allegations were baseless and that the killer had been transferred from a high school to a middle school based upon his wishes.
They said that he wanted to make the move to benefit from the administrative advantages of joining the new school located in a more geographically challenging area, which gives teacher extra bonuses.
The principal of the new school said that the teacher did not make any complaint to anyone about his transfer or about the education office and that he spent the first semester of the year without any problem.
Teachers said they were shocked by the online reports that their colleague was unhappy in the new school and that he wanted to take revenge on the education office, the sources added.
According to Okaz, several teachers said on Friday they were still reeling from the shock of the tragedy, saying that what compounded the drama was the fact it involved a teacher whose mission is to educate and help build lives, not to kill the innocent and deprive them of their lives.
Several of the teachers paid glowing tribute to the victims, saying that even if there were mistakes or an understanding, killing was and should never be an option, the daily added.
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