A female teacher heroically saved her class from a crazed gunman massacring pupils in her school – as her own son was murdered in the next-door classroom.
Shocking details have emerged from the bloodbath after an ex-student rampaged through School No 175 in the Russian city of Kazan with a gun and explosives.
Ilnaz Galyaviev, 19, was arrested on suspicion of mass murder after seven children and two teachers were killed.
Galyaviev claimed he was God and had a "monster inside me" and vowed to kill "a big amount of bio trash".
Several students remain in a "grave" condition among the 21 wounded.
Saviour teacher Alina Zaripova, 42, was lauded in the aftermath of the massacre for calmly barricading the door of her classroom and ordering her students to crouch under her desks.
It later emerged that her own son died just a few feet away in a different classroom as she comforted and held the children.
She even wrote a message to reassure parents on the class social media group chat saying: "Everything is fine, the children are here with me, and all is calm in our class."
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Amir Zaripov, 14, was one of the seven students killed in the shooting.
Sofia, a student in Alina’s class, said: "It turns out, instead of saving her son, the teacher saved us.
"We heard such bangs many times, there was a strange noise and people were crying. We were very scared and could not understand anything."
As well as Amir, the students killed were Damir Gainutdinov, 14, Amir Shaikhutdinov, 14, Alisa Garifullina, 15, Amir Volkov, 15, Zulfiya Galimzyanova, 15, and Ilziya Nagimullina, 14.
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Two school staff – Elvira Ignatieva, 25, and Venera Aizatova, 55, were also killed. Venera had been teaching for 34 years.
Student Daniyar, said: "We sat on the floor under the back row desks, and heard an explosion and shooting.
"The teacher was with us all the time until the rescuers and headteachers knocked on the door told us it was safe to go out.
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"When everything was over and we were out of the building, the teacher (Alina Zaripova) started looking for her son.
"We saw how she called, cried, searched for her son, but could not find him."
An unnamed girl in the class where most children died told KazanFirst: "We were told to urgently close all windows and doors.
"We closed the windows but did not have time to shut the door. A man with a large gun came into our classroom.
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"Without saying anything, without threatening, he just crossed the threshold and started shooting at us.
"We all crawled under the desks, and I hid under the teacher's table.
"Our teacher stood at the door, she also got hit. She was shot."
Teacher Venera was shot as she went out into the corridor to check what the disturbance was.
She was sitting in on a lesson by English teacher Elvira, who was then shot as the gunman confronted her.
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Reports said she was killed saving the life of one of her students.
One pupil who survived the slaughter, Anisa Ustinova, posted online: "It seems to you that such things will never touch you, that it happens only somewhere else – in the news and so on.
"And when you sit in the corner of the class when you hear the shots into the door to open it and shoot us dead, even then you do not fully realise.
"Only then, after a few hours, you understand how much it was on the edge and how many things coincided for you to stay alive."
Reports said that two children had died jumping from classroom windows to escape the carnage.
Funerals were underway on Wednesday in the mainly Muslim city for those killed in the school massacre.
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