French President Emmanuel Macron on Tuesday condemned a “senseless wave of violence” after a teaching assistant stabbed by a 15-year-old pupil outside a school in the east of the country died of her wounds.
The secondary school student was arrested after attacking the 31-year-old assistant with a knife during a bag search in Nogent in eastern France, officials said.
France has in recent years seen a series of attacks on teachers and pupils by other schoolchildren.
“While protecting our children, a teaching assistant lost her life, the victim of a senseless wave of violence,” Macron wrote on X, commenting on the latest in a spate of such incidents at French schools.
“The nation is in mourning and the government is mobilised to reduce crime,” he added.
Education Minister Elisabeth 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 pupil is 15 years old and 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.
– ‘Have had enough’ –
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-Remi 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.”
At the end of 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 Francois Bayrou called for “more intensive checks around and inside schools”.
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