But it additionally occurred nearly three years after one other trainer, Samuel Paty, was beheaded by a radicalised Chechen close to a Paris space college.
French anti-terror prosecutors had been main the investigation into the stabbings on the Gambetta-Carnot college, which enrolls college students ages 11-18 and is situated within the metropolis of Arras, some 185 kilometres north of Paris.
The suspected assailant was arrested. National police recognized him as a Russian nationwide of Chechen origin.
The French intelligence providers informed The Associated Press the person had been carefully watched for the reason that summer season with tails and phone surveillance and was stopped as lately as Thursday for a police test that discovered no wrongdoing.
Sliman Hamzi, a police officer who was one of many first on the scene stated the suspected attacker, a former pupil on the college, shouted “Allahu akbar,” or “God is great” in Arabic.
Hamzi stated he was alerted by one other officer, rushed to the college and noticed a male sufferer mendacity on the bottom outdoors the college and the attacker being taken away.
“Colleagues arrived quickly but unfortunately couldn’t save the victim,” Hamzi stated.
Police stated two different males, a second trainer and a safety guard, had been in vital situation.
French President Emmanuel Macron traveled to Arras together with the inside and schooling ministers.
Macron stopped for a second earlier than the blanket-covered physique of the trainer, which was within the car parking zone in entrance of the college. A puddle of blood was seen as forensic consultants labored across the physique.
Macron then went to see college students from the college in an adjoining constructing. School assaults are uncommon in France, and the federal government requested authorities to intensify vigilance in any respect colleges throughout the nation.
Julie Duhamel, an official with the the Unsa lecturers’ union within the Pas-de-Calais area that features Arras, informed Franceinfo that lecturers had famous the suspect’s radicalisation “a few years ago”.
The suspected assailant’s phone conversations in latest days gave no indication of an impending assault, main intelligence officers to conclude that the assailant determined all of a sudden on Friday to behave, intelligence providers informed The Associated Press.
The suspect’s brother was arrested in the summertime of 2019 by the DGSI – France’s counter-terrorism intelligence service – on suspicion of being concerned within the planning of an assault that was thwarted and is in jail, French intelligence stated.
Police stated one other brother was arrested Friday.
Hundreds of police deployed across the college and close by neighbourhoods, together with closely armed items, and barricaded a large perimeter across the college.
Parents stated pupils had been nonetheless confined to the locked-down college greater than three hours after the assault.
Friday’s assault had echoes of Paty’s slaying on October 16, 2020 — additionally a Friday — by an 18-year-old who had change into radicalised. Like the suspect in Friday’s stabbings, that attacker was of Chechen background.
Martin Doussau, a philosophy trainer on the Gambetta highschool, stated the attacker was armed with two knives and seemed to be looking particularly for a historical past trainer. Paty taught historical past and geography.
“I was chased by the attacker who … asked me if I teach history. (He said), ‘Are you a history teacher, are you a history teacher?'” stated Doussau, who recounted how he barricaded himself behind a door till police used a stun gun to subdue the attacker.
“When he turned around and asked me if I am a history teacher, I immediately thought of Samuel Paty,” Doussau informed reporters.
Prosecutors stated they had been contemplating prices of terror-related homicide and tried homicide towards the suspect.
The assault got here amid heightened tensions around the globe over Hamas’ weekend assault on southern Israel and Israel’s navy response, which have killed tons of of civilians on each side.
There have been calls in Muslim nations for mass protests after Friday prayers over Israel’s intense bombing marketing campaign in Gaza.
Interior Minister Gerard Darmanin on Thursday ordered native authorities to ban all pro-Palestinian demonstrations amid an increase in anti-semitic acts for the reason that Hamas assault.
France is estimated to have the world’s third-largest Jewish inhabitants after Israel and the US, and the most important Muslim inhabitants in Western Europe.
France’s National Assembly, the decrease home of Parliament, held a minute of silence for the victims on the opening of its Friday session.
National Assembly Vice President Naima Moutchou stated the meeting “expresses its solidarity and ideas for the victims, their households and the tutorial group as we be taught {that a} trainer has been killed and a number of other others have been injured.″
Source: www.9news.com.au
