A teenage student at a French high school in the western city of Nantes stabbed four other students during a lunch break on Thursday, killing one of them and injuring the others before he was overpowered and arrested, the authorities said.
The police did not immediately identify the assailant, but Le Parisien newspaper said a 15-year-old male student was responsible for the attack. BFM TV reported that the student killed was female. There was no apparent indication of any terrorist motive for the attack, but the antiterrorism prosecutor’s office confirmed that it was evaluating the case.
Élisabeth Borne, the education minister, and Bruno Retailleau, the interior minister, both rushed to the scene. Knife attacks in schools have become an issue of particular sensitivity in France after a series of episodes, including the fatal stabbing of a teacher by a student at a private school in the southwestern city of St.-Jean-de-Luz in February 2023, and several more minor recent attacks.
French news media reported that the assailant in Thursday’s stabbing sent a manifesto earlier in the day to the school denouncing the state of the world, particularly “systemic violence” and “social alienation.” The police did not immediately comment on the manifesto.
The apparent manifesto said “the system infiltrates minds, bodies, relationships, emotions, desires and language,” forming an “invisible architecture of mental submission.”
The attack occurred at the private Notre-Dame-de-Toutes-Aides High School, which was quickly surrounded by police and military forces. The local Ouest-France newspaper said the assailant had a helmet and a balaclava and was dressed in black. Two knives, including a hunting knife, were reportedly found with his belongings.