At least one teenager is dead after a lunchtime knife attack injured three others at a private school in Nantes, France.
Panic erupted when word of a ‘student who was armed with a knife’ spread through Notre-Dame-de-Toutes-Aides high school in western France early this afternoon.
Students ran through the courtyard to escape, or locked themselves in classrooms, eyewitnesses reported.
A staff member ended the rampage by subduing the attacker and restraining them until police arrived to make an arrest.
The attacker is believed to be a 15-year-old student, described by one pupil on BFM TV as ‘a bit of a weird student since the beginning of the year’.
‘We left our classroom at 1pm and saw a lot of students crying – we didn’t understand why’, one student told Ouest France newspaper at the scene.
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At least four people were treated for injuries sustained in the stabbing.
One of those has since died. The condition of the others is unclear at this point.
Parents fearing for their children’s safety have flocked to collect their kids from the school in the Doulon area of Nantes.
Surrounding roads are blocked off by police cars and ambulances in France’s sixth largest city, home to around 320,000 people.
‘It was just another day’, one crying student said of the morning at school. ‘We had exams this morning and we had more today.’
Interior Minister Bruno Retailleau is yet to make a statement on the stabbing.
He is understood to be travelling to Nantes with education minister Élisabeth Borne to ‘express my solidarity with the victims and my support for the educational community’, she said.
Attacks at schools are rare in France. Dominique Bernard, a 57-year-old high school teacher, was stabbed to death at Gambetta high school in Arras on October 13, 2023.
Four people, including headteacher, were injured in a shooting at Alexis de Tocqueville lycee in Grasse, southern France, in March 2017.
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