A Moscow high-school student shot a teacher and a police officer dead and held more than 20 other students hostage in a classroom on Monday before he was disarmed and detained, police said, just days before Russia hosts the Winter Olympics.


In a rare school shooting in Russia, the attacker entered his school in northern Moscow carrying a rifle and held students and a teacher hostage in a biology classroom, police in the capital said.


Police later said the attacker had been detained and had been led out of the school and into a waiting car. According to the Lifenews website, he initially shot one officer and then opened fire at others who arrived at the scene.


"The person who took 20 people and a teacher hostage is a student in the upper classes at the same school. He has been neutralized 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 sent dozens of students scurrying out the school while a police helicopter landed in a snow-covered field outside.


It came with Russia in the global spotlight four days before it hosts the 2014 Winter Olympics in the Black Sea resort city of Sochi.