POLICE are studying YouTube videos posted shortly before nine students were shot dead in Finland.

POLICE are studying YouTube videos posted shortly before nine students were shot dead in Finland.

Four clips on the popular video-sharing site show a man firing a pistol, with a message alongside reading: "Whole life is war and whole life is pain. And you will fight alone in your personal war."

In another clip - entitled "You will die next" - the same man fires a handgun directly at the camera.

Detectives want to identify the suspect, who has the username Wumpscut86, and is pictured in the footage wearing a black leather jacket.

The uploads were made hours before a 20-year-old gunman went on a rampage at a Finnish vocational college, killing nine of his classmates.

In a news conference given by Finnish government officials, it was revealed that the gunman had posted videos of himself on YouTube that had come to the attention of police.

The man was questioned but was found to have a temporary gun permit given to him in August 2008 and police saw no grounds to arrest him.

The attacker, a student at the school in Kauhajoki, north of Helsinki, shot himself in the head and was severely wounded, police said.

Local journalist Timo Huovinen said students had just sat down to take an exam when the shooting began.

They were evacuated as shots rang round a domestic sciences building at the Kauhajoki Palvelualojen Oppilaitos school.

The incident comes less than a year after a massacre at a Finnish high school in Jokela, north of Helsinki.

On November 7, 2007, 18-year-old student Pekka-Eric Auvinen shot six students, the school's headmistress and a nurse before turning his gun on himself.

Finland has the third highest rate of gun ownership in the world, behind the US and Yemen.