A teenage student shot a teacher and a police officer dead, taking more than 20 other children hostage at a school in Russia’s capital Moscow on Monday, before he was disarmed and detained.

The attacker entered the school, which is located in the north of the city, carrying a rifle. He then took a group of students and a teacher hostage in a biology classroom, police said.

The perpetrator was later said to have been detained and led out of the school and into a waiting car.

“The person who took 20 people and a teacher hostage is a student in the upper classes at the same school. He has been neutralised and all the students have been freed,” Interior Ministry spokesman Andrei Pilipchuk said on state TV.

“One policeman was fatally wounded during the operation and died in hospital, and a teacher at school No. 263 was also killed,” he said.

The shooting prompted dozens of students to flee the school, while a police helicopter landed in a snowy field outside.

The incident comes just days before the start of the 2014 Winter Olympics, which will be hosted in Sochi.

(FRANCE 24 with REUTERS)