Even though school is out for at least a week, students kept coming on Wednesday morning, the day after a deadly school shooting in Austria stunned the country.

Instead of going into the modern buildings of their high school, they walked across the street to a protected gathering spot, well cordoned off from mourners, well-wishers and reporters.

“What's really important now is to talk, to be silent together, to listen,” said Paul Nitsche, 51, an evangelical pastor who teaches religion at the school and who was standing on the street in front of the mourning area.

On Tuesday, a former student killed or fatally wounded at least 10 people at the school, BORG Dreierschützengasse, in Graz, a quiet and well-to-do city that is Austria’s second-largest, after Vienna. He then appeared to have killed himself in a school bathroom, the police said.

It was one of the worst school shootings in Europe in the past decade.

The Austrian chancellor, Christian Stocker, canceled appointments on Tuesday to travel to Graz and declared three days of national mourning — including a moment of silence at 10 a.m. local time on Wednesday.

The news of the shooting shocked Austria, an Alpine nation where gun ownership rates are high but gun violence is comparatively rare.