Teacher killed in Arras school attack in northern France

A teacher has been killed and two other people injured in a stabbing in a school in Arras, northern France.

Europe 1 reported that the suspected attacker, who has been arrested, was on a watchlist of people known as being a security risk in connection to radical islamism. Local media reported that he was former pupil at the school. A police source told Agence France-Presse he was from Russia’s mainly Muslim southern Caucasus region of Chechnya.

France’s anti-terrorism prosecution office said it would start an investigation, as President Emmanuel Macron headed to the scene.

The attack at the Gambetta high school happened at about 11am. BFM reported that the person killed was a French language teacher. A second teacher and a school security guard are are in hospital with critical injuries, according to the local prefect.

A video on social media filmed by students showed a man, in a grey jacket, carrying a knife attacking people in the school courtyard. One of the victims tried to keep him at a distance with a chair.

Local police said the situation had been contained and no longer posed a danger to the public. Students and teachers were confined to the school premises.

A vice-president of the lower house of parliament, Naïma Moutchou, said the national assembly “expresses its solidarity and thoughts for the victims, their families and the educational community as we learn that a teacher has been killed and several others have been injured”.

France has been hit a series of attacks by Islamist extremists since 2015.

The beheading of a teacher almost exactly three years ago in a Paris suburb by a Chechen refugee led to a wave of shock and renewed debate about the influence of radical Islam.

Samuel Paty, 47, a history and geography teacher, was killed in an attack by an 18-year-old outside his school in Conflans-Sainte-Honorine on 16 October 2020.