France
Knife attacker injures two elementary school students in Alsace
The police near the school: The alleged perpetrator is unknown to the officers and was not noticed because of radicalization. photo
© Frederick Florin/AFP/dpa
Horror in a town near Strasbourg: an attacker injures two elementary school students with a knife. The police arrest the man; there is initially no evidence of radicalization.
An attacker has in France slightly injured two elementary school students with a knife and terrified an entire town near Strasbourg.
After the attack in Souffelweyersheim, a suspect was arrested, as the police prefecture in the Alsace metropolis announced. According to the public prosecutor’s office, he is in police custody. The two students suffered superficial cuts. They were taken to the pediatric department of the University Hospital in Strasbourg.
Man arrested shortly after the crime
The attacker’s motive has not yet been announced. The alleged perpetrator was unknown to the police and was not noticed for radicalization, said the head of cabinet of the prefect of the Bas-Rhin department, Jean-Baptiste Peyrat, in front of the school. The man did not break into the school and there is no longer any danger. According to media reports, the 28-year-old was arrested without resistance just minutes after the attack. As the broadcaster BFMTV reported with reference to the police, the attacker is said to have not been in full possession of his mental powers.
According to authorities, the six- and eleven-year-old girls were attacked in two different locations, one at the school and the other in a nearby square. The remaining students initially had to stay in the school, which was closed for security reasons, while their parents waited outside. Medical and psychological help was organized for the affected school.
A serious incident occurred in an adjacent middle school, which was also cordoned off due to the threat. A student there suffered a serious heart attack during this time, the prefecture said. After first aid on site, the student was taken to a Strasbourg clinic in a threatening condition.
Highest terror alert level in France
The highest terror alert level currently applies in France and schools have been given special protection for a long time. “I panicked, I immediately thought of my son,” a mother told BFMTV outside the school. “It hurts to know that something like this can happen in a school.” In mid-October, an Islamist-radicalized former student stabbed a teacher at a high school in Arras, northern France.