NEW DELHI: Families in India and Israel yesterday mourned two professors among the 32 people killed in the shooting rampage.

Liviu Librescu, a professor from Virginia Tech's Engineering Science & Mechanics department, is seen in this handout released April 17, 2007. Librescu was identified as one of those killed by Cho Seung-Hui, a student from South Korea who killed 32 people at the university on Monday in the worst shooting rampage in US history. [Reuters]

Liviu Librescu, 75, an engineering science and mathematics lecturer, tried to stop the gunman from entering his classroom by blocking the door before he was fatally shot, his son said Tuesday from Tel Aviv, Israel.

"My father blocked the doorway with his body and asked the students to flee," Joe Librescu said in a telephone interview from his home outside of Tel Aviv. "Students started opening windows and jumping out."

Librescu immigrated to Israel from Romania in 1978 and then moved to Virginia in 1985 for his sabbatical, but had stayed since then, said Joe Librescu, who himself studied at the school from 1989 to 1994.

Another foreign professor was also killed. Indian-born G.V. Loganathan, 51, a lecturer at the Department of Civil and Environmental Engineering, was felled by the gunman, his brother G.V. Palanivel told the NDTV news channel from the southern Indian state of Tamil Nadu.

Palanivel said he was informed by Loganathan's wife, who had identified the body. "We all feel like we have had an electric shock, we do not know what to do," Palanivel said. "He has been a driving force for all of us, the guiding force."

Loganathan, who was born in the southern Indian city of Chennai, had been at Virginia Tech since 1982.

Indian officials said they were trying to assist families and determine how many Indian students were involved.