French police were questioning a 15-year-old student who allegedly stabbed to death a 31-year-old school assistant on Tuesday as the pupils' bags were being checked outside the gates of a school in Nogent in northeastern France.
The teenager was being held at the gendarmerie of Nogent while being questioned, the Haute-Marne Prefecture said.
A police officer helping with the bag checks at the Françoise Dolto School in Nogent was slightly injured during the arrest, the gendarme service said.
French President Emmanuel Macron condemned the "senseless wave of violence" after the fatal stabbing.
“While she was looking after our children in Nogent, an educational assistant lost her life, a victim of senseless violence,” French President Emmanuel Macron said in a post on X.
“The nation is in mourning and the government is mobilised to reduce crime.”
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Education Minister Élisabeth Borne was on her way to Nogent "to support the entire school community and the police".
"I commend the composure and dedication of those who acted to subdue the attacker and protect the students and staff," she said on X.
The 15-year-old suspect did not have a criminal record. The teaching assistant received several knife wounds just as classes were starting, and the alleged attacker, who was overpowered by gendarmes, "appears to be a student at the school", education officials said.
'Immense pain'
In March, French police started random searches for knives and other weapons concealed in bags at and around schools.
The teaching assistant was "simply doing her job by welcoming students at the entrance to the school", said Elisabeth Allain-Moreno, secretary general of the SE-UNSA teachers' union, expressing "immense pain".
Allain-Moreno said that the attack "shows that nothing can ever be completely secure and that it is prevention that needs to be focused on".
Jean-Rémi Girard, president of the National Union of Secondary Schools, added: "It's impossible to be more vigilant 24 hours a day.
"We can't say that every student is a danger or a threat, otherwise we'd never get out of bed in the morning."
French far-right leader Marine Le Pen denounced what she called the "normalisation of extreme violence, encouraged by the apathy of the authorities".
"Not a week goes by without a tragedy striking a school," Le Pen said on X.
"The French people have had enough and are waiting for a firm, uncompromising and determined political response to the scourge of juvenile violence," she added.
In April, after a fatal attack at a school in Nantes, the education ministry reported that 958 random bag checks in schools had led to the seizure of 94 knives.
After that knife attack, which left one person dead and three injured, Prime Minister François Bayrou called for "more intensive checks around and inside schools".
(FRANCE 24 with AFP, AP and Reuters)
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