A teenage student at a French high school in the western city of Nantes stabbed four other students during a lunch break on Thursday, killing one of them and injuring the others before he was overpowered and arrested, the authorities said.
The police did not immediately identify the assailant, but French news outlets said that a male student, reported as being 15 or 16 years old, was responsible for the attack. BFM TV reported that the student killed was female. There was no apparent indication of any terrorist motive for the attack, but the antiterrorism prosecutor’s office confirmed that it was evaluating the case.
Élisabeth Borne, the education minister, and Bruno Retailleau, the interior minister, both rushed to the scene. Knife attacks in schools have become an issue of particular sensitivity in France after a series of incidents, including the fatal stabbing of a teacher by a student at a private school in the southwestern city of St.-Jean-de-Luz in February 2023, and several more minor recent attacks.
French news media reported that the assailant in Thursday’s stabbing sent an electronic message earlier in the day to others at the school denouncing the state of the world, particularly “systemic violence” and “social alienation.” The police did not immediately comment on his writings.
The document said that “the information society is in reality an immense conditioning operation,” aimed at “rendering human beings docile, predictable and programmable.”
The attack occurred at the private Notre-Dame-de-Toutes-Aides High School, which was quickly surrounded by the police and military forces. The local Ouest-France newspaper said the assailant had a helmet and a balaclava and was dressed in black, and that two knives, including a hunting knife, were found with his belongings.
President Emmanuel Macron of France expressed his “heartfelt thoughts” on X and wrote: “Teachers undoubtedly prevented further tragedy. Their courage commands respect.”
In a statement, Prime Minister François Bayrou said the assault “highlights the endemic violence that exists among some of our young people,” and called on Ms. Borne and Mr. Retailleau to submit “concrete proposals on prevention, regulation and enforcement” within four weeks.
Concerned about growing violence in schools, Ms. Borne and Mr. Retailleau wrote last month to regional prefects and heads of schools urging “random checks in the areas around educational establishments.” It is unclear whether any increased security operations are already underway across France.
The far-right National Rally party of Marine Le Pen, which has made security a core part of its political program, reacted quickly.
“It is more than time to take the necessary measures to eradicate the banalization of the extreme violence which is ravaging the heart of our schools,” Ms. Le Pen, who has been barred from running for public office after her recent conviction on embezzlement charges, wrote on social media.
The single largest contributor to the French trauma over violence in schools was the stabbing and decapitation of Samuel Paty, a French history teacher, in October 2020, near his school in the Paris region.
The killer, an 18-year-old Russian of Chechen descent, Abdoullakh Anzorov, was shot and killed by the police shortly after the attack. He had been angered by the teacher’s display of caricatures of the Prophet Muhammad to illustrate free speech in a civics class.
Schools hold a place of near sacred importance in the structure of the French Republic because they are seen as the places where the culture of a secular, nondiscriminatory and colorblind society is taught, however far short of that ideal France may sometimes fall.
Ségolène Le Stradic contributed reporting.
Roger Cohen is the Paris Bureau chief for The Times, covering France and beyond. He has reported on wars in Lebanon, Bosnia and Ukraine, and between Israel and Gaza, in more than four decades as a journalist. At The Times, he has been a correspondent, foreign editor and columnist.
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