Student Stabs 4 Others, One Fatally, at a French High School, Officials Say

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.