Students fled as the gunman opened fire

Papers in Canada have been left stunned by Wednesday's shootings at Dawson College in Montreal, which left one woman dead and 19 others injured.

The attacker, reported to be a local Canadian man, was shot dead by police officers after running amok.

In Montreal itself, the French-language daily La Presse reports extensively on the shooting, offering its readers a chronology of events, forecasts of the likely psychological impact on students at the college and further insights from a number of commentators.

Columnist Andre Pratte says the attack needs to be seen in the context of a recent move by Prime Minister Stephen Harper's government to abolish a firearms register for rifles.

"How can a government which claims to hold the security of Canadians dear adopt such a measure?" he asks.

"Could the grief, the fear which Mr Harper saw on the faces of students at Dawson, the anguish in the eyes of their parents, lead him to reconsider his decision?"

It's impossible not to ask oneself why young people can enter a college with the firm intention of killing others La Presse

"It only happens to other people," says the headline from another of the paper's columnists, Michel Auger, who can't help but recall the 1999 Columbine massacre in the US state of Colorado, when two teenagers killed 12 other students and a teacher before killing themselves.

It was the same "gratuitous violence", he observes, the same initial reports of a "macabre ritual" with "rifles hidden under long black overcoats".

"It's impossible," he says, "not to ask oneself why young people can enter a college with the firm intention of killing others."

Looking for answers

The Gazette, an English-language paper also based in Montreal, looks closer to home for painful examples of similar violence.

The massacre of 14 women at a Montreal school in 1989 and the killing of four people by a former professor at a university in the city three years later "are seared into our memories", the paper says.

In considering how such shootings can be prevented in the future, the paper quotes two US studies which suggest students should be prepared to speak up about friends who are struggling to cope with "major losses or perceived failures".

"Nobody wants a campus full of officious snitches," the paper says, "but everyone... needs to understand we all have a role in guarding against tragedies as senseless as the one at Dawson."

Photos and eyewitnesses

Papers in Montreal aren't alone in covering the shooting in minute detail.

Canadians should focus on the real 'root cause' of school shootings: evil, troubled souls National Post

Under the headline "Hallway horror", the Ontario-based National Post features a gallery of photos showing fleeing students and anxious parents in the hours that followed the shooting, as well as the latest eyewitness reports and links to reports aired on Canadian TV.

The paper itself warns the public not to look for scapegoats, the same sort of "societal morality play" which it says followed Columbine.

Instead of "hunting for external phenomena", the paper says, "Canadians should focus... on the real 'root cause' of school shootings: evil, troubled souls."

The Toronto Star takes a similar line, and examines what it says was the last online posting by the gunman before the attack.

He was, the paper says, a "man who loved guns and hated people".

"Carnage and courage in Montreal" is how another Toronto paper, The Globe and Mail, sums up the shootings, with commentator Roy MacGregor sending his readers a simple request.

"If you can make sense of this, let me know."

BBC Monitoring selects and translates news from radio, television, press, news agencies and the internet from 150 countries in more than 70 languages. It is based in Caversham, UK, and has several bureaux abroad.