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A teacher has been killed in a knife attack at a secondary school in the northern French city of Arras and two others were injured, including a security guard, who is in critical condition.
The police are still investigating the motives of the attack, and the suspected perpetrator has been arrested.
“A police operation is under way at the Gambetta high school in Arras,” said French interior minister Gérald Darmanin on social media platform X. “The person who committed the acts has been arrested.”
A French official said the attacker yelled “Allahu akbar” during the incident, and that he was of Chechen origin and a former student at that high school. He was on a watchlist of people known as a potential security risk in connection to radical Islamism, the person said.
French anti-terrorism prosecutors said they had opened an investigation on charges of murder and attempted murder involving a terrorist group.
A police official said the brother of the alleged attacker had also been arrested at a nearby high school.
Although the attacker’s motives remain unknown, the incident is reminiscent of another traumatic attack in France almost exactly three years ago when a 47-year-old teacher, Samuel Paty, was beheaded in his classroom by a Chechen Muslim. A history teacher, Paty was targeted by Islamists for having taught a class on free speech that included showing students cartoons depicting the Prophet Mohammed.
Paty’s death has left deep scars on the country, particularly the educational community. France has been hit by a series of Islamist attacks in recent years, the worst one being the simultaneous assault on a theatre and cafés in Paris in November 2015.
President Emmanuel Macron was set to travel to Arras to visit the high school later on Friday, accompanied by Darmanin and the education minister Gabriel Attal.
The attack comes at a tense moment in which government officials had expressed concern that the conflict between Israel and Hamas would have repercussions in France. The country is home to the largest Jewish population in Europe, and Jewish leaders had expressed fears about antisemitic attacks.
It remains unknown whether Friday’s attack was antisemitic in nature, and little is known about the victims.
Macron had called for national unity in a televised speech on Thursday evening. “Let us not add national fractures to international fractures and let us not give in to any form of hatred,” he said.
David Morel, a police official from the Alliance union, told BFM TV that students in the school were not immediately evacuated but had been confined on the site. They remained in the school early on Friday afternoon.