The French prime minister, François Bayrou, has called for a crackdown on teenage knife crime after a high-school student stabbed four other children at his school, killing at least one and injuring the others before being arrested.
The 15-year-old reportedly attacked fellow students with a knife during lunch break on Thursday at the private Notre-Dame-de-Toutes-Aides secondary school in the city of Nantes on the Atlantic coast. The attack took place at around 12:30pm (11:30 BST), before teachers overpowered the boy. One female student was killed. At least one other student is in a critical condition in hospital.
“This tragedy shows once again the endemic violence that exists in a part of our youth,” Bayrou said in a statement. “Fundamental questions must be asked in terms of education, values and respect for human life.”
He ordered checks inside and around schools to be intensified immediately. He also said a commission would look into how to deal with teenage knife crime in terms of weapons sales, and the owning and carrying knives – studying best practice in other countries across the world.
Praising the “bravery” of the teachers who intervened, the French president, Emmanuel Macron, said the whole nation shared in the school’s shock and grief.
A police source told France Info that the boy had first targeted a pupil on the second floor of the school and had then attacked three others coming down the stairs. He had gone into two classrooms, the source said. France Info also reported that the boy was carrying two knives.
The boy was in police custody and a psychiatric assessment was being carried out, France Télévisions reported.
The education minister, Élisabeth Borne and the interior minister, Bruno Retailleau, travelled to the school to show “solidarity with victims and the school community”.
Images from the scene showed police and troops surrounding the school as the investigation got under way.
An official at the school, which is part of a complex housing a primary and middle school, would not comment on what happened. They said the school was concentrating on caring for the students who were on campus at the time.
The school administration sent a message to the families of the 2,000 or so students who attend the school, informing them of the incident. Students had been immediately confined inside the school.
