One student was killed and three others were injured during a stab wound attack in a school in western France on Thursday, police announced.
The alleged attacker, a 15-year-old student, would have entered two classrooms at the private school Notre-Dame-de-Toutes-Aides in Douvon, near Nantes, and led the attacks.
The teachers managed to dominate the striker before the police arrived.
French President Emmanuel Macron praised teachers’ intervention, saying that this prevented a new tragedy.
He extended his “sincere thoughts to families, students and the whole educational community”, adding that France shared their sorrow.
The attacker would have worn a helmet and a hood
Newspaper West France reported that the attacker was dressed in black, wearing a helmet and a hood. Two knives were found next to his property.
An e-mail sent from the address of the alleged striker, which the French media described as a twenty-page document, painted a dark image of the company.
BFMTV reported that the deceased student was a woman. One of the injured students was hospitalized in a “very serious state”.
The school kept the students inside for hours while the police secured the site and questioned them. The worried parents were waiting outside. Police and armed forces surrounded the region.
France considering metal detectors in schools
French Prime Minister François Bayrou has ordered increased security in and around schools.
He asked for new measures to notify and approach violence in the knife in adolescents and children in the four weeks, and said that metal detectors in schools could be an option.
The French Minister of Education, Elisabeth Borne, went to school with the Minister of the Interior Bruno Retailleau to show “solidarity with the victims and the school community”.
“A terrible drama occurred at noon today, and my thoughts go to the teenager who lost their lives and to the three injured students” and their families, said Borne.
France has recently been shaken by a series of incidents in and around schools.
In February, Borne said that the police would begin to perform occasional checks for knives and other weapons hidden in bags in schools in order to face an increase in violent attacks.
Edited by: Rana Taha
