Va. Killings Widely Seen as Reflecting a Violent Society

"It is a little incident if we compare it with the disasters that have happened in Iraq," said Ranya Riyad, 19, a college student in Baghdad. "We are dying every day."

"They are always saying that the Arabs and Muslims are behind the terrorism and the killing," said Hussein Kadhum, 26, a traffic policeman in the heavily Shiite city of Najaf, south of Baghdad. "But America has terrorism and they are exporting it to us. We did not have this violence in the Saddam era because the law was so tough on guns."

Husam Kareem al-Iqabi, a Baghdad teacher, expressed more sympathy, while condemning the shooter. "It is a big crime because it is a terrorist act and he is a terrorist," Iqabi said. "But there are thousands like him in Iraq, and I wish we would see this international interest in the killing of 33 students in America for all the martyrs that fell at the gates of universities, on the bridges and in the markets in Iraq."

Much of the foreign reaction centered on the proliferation of guns in the United States.

In an editorial, the Mexico City newspaper El Universal drew parallels between the Virginia Tech killings and a wave of violence that claimed 25 lives on the same day in Mexico. "In our case, the majority of the instruments of death come from the north, the United States," it said, referring to guns used in crime.

"The United States is a violent country," Arik Bachar, a veteran reporter and columnist, wrote in an analysis in the Israeli newspaper Maariv, calling Monday's crime a chapter in "a sick story between the United States and its arms."

Germany's Der Spiegel said the United States "should be looking at why these kinds of horrible crimes happen so often" there. But in November, an 18-year-old man carrying three guns and homemade pipe bombs opened fire at his former high school in the western German town of Emsdetten, wounding five people before killing himself. And in April 2002, a 19-year-old man killed 16 people at his former high school in the German city of Erfurt before killing himself.

Today in Britain, even Olympic pistol shooters are subject to the handgun ban and are required to train abroad.

"We do not start at the basic position that you have the right to bear arms," said Tim Bonner of Countryside Alliance, a group that represents sport shooters. "There's always been a presumption that you have to prove that you are a decent, responsible person to own guns. We are protected by legislation that prevents nutters from getting guns."

Correspondents Edward Cody in Seoul, Peter Finn in Moscow, Monte Reel in Buenos Aires, Manuel Roig-Franzia in Mexico City, Doug Struck in Toronto, Kevin Sullivan in London, Craig Timberg in Kano, Nigeria, Craig Whitlock in Berlin and Scott Wilson in Jerusalem, and special correspondents Salih Dehema, Naseer Mehdawi and Naseer Nouri in Baghdad, Saad Sarhan in Najaf and Corinne Gavard in Paris contributed to this report.