Seven-year-old dies in stabbing attack at Croatia school

ZAGREB – A seven-year-old pupil was killed, and several others injured, in a stabbing attack at a school in the Croatian capital Zagreb on Dec 20, with a 19-year-old male suspect arrested, the authorities said.

The police sealed off Precko primary school after the attack, thought to be the first of its kind in Croatia. Parents and pupils expressed their shock and anger.

“A total of six people were injured, of whom unfortunately one child died on the spot after intensive efforts to revive them,” Health Minister Irena Hrstic told reporters, revising downwards an earlier larger toll cited by officials.

“The deceased child is seven years old,” she added.

Interior Minister Davor Bozinovic said the suspect was a former pupil of the school.

Following the attack, the suspect fled and hid at a nearby healthcare centre, where he tried to kill himself with a knife and was apprehended by the police, the minister added.

The suspect had a record of mental disorders and a year ago had attempted suicide, Mr Bozinovic said.

The minister said preliminary investigations indicated that the attack happened in a school hallway and not a classroom.

Parents quoted by state-run broadcaster HRT said pupils had just finished their school breakfast when they saw a young man beating a boy, and then panic broke out.

“I heard from my sister that there was no one at the entrance and that the attacker entered, breaking into a first-grade classroom and then into a fifth-grade class,” Filip, 14, told AFP outside the school. He said his sister was a first-grade pupil at the school.

Filip – who attends the school in the afternoon – said other first-graders leaving the scene had been “speechless from shock”.

Others called for more security after the attack.

Parent Marko Sikirica, looking visibly shaken, told reporters: “We must have fences. Today there is everything, radars, detectors, cameras, analytics, AI (artificial intelligence)... But what do we have? A man enters an open, unprotected school!”

Ms Hrstic said all of the wounded were being treated at hospitals and were in stable condition. The alleged attacker was also injured during the incident, she added.

“We are shocked, as is the entire Croatian public, with the horrible tragedy at the primary school,” Prime Minister Andrej Plenkovic said at the start of a Cabinet meeting.

Zagreb Mayor Tomislav Tomasevic, Interior Minister Davor Bozinovic and Education Minister Radovan Fuchs rushed to the school following the attack.

“We are appalled and heartbroken,” Mr Tomasevic told journalists.

The suspected attacker’s mother told local media that he had been treated at a psychiatric hospital on several occasions.

“I begged the doctor not to release him because he was not fit for that,” she said.

Around midday, about a dozen police cars with their lights on were parked in front the school, according to an AFP reporter.

The area was sealed off, and forensic experts dressed in white overalls were collecting evidence from the schoolyard.

The city authorities later published contact details for free psychological support.

Mr Marko Palada, a Precko community official, said: “Children should be provided with psychological support...

“I met a neighbour whose child is in the fifth grade. The child... was in shock and couldn’t say two coherent words.”

Fatal attacks on the public are rare in Croatia.

In July, a gunman killed six people at a nursing home in eastern Croatia’s Daruvar in an attack that horrified the Balkan country.

In 2023, neighbouring Serbia was rocked by back-to-back mass shootings, including a massacre at a school in the capital Belgrade in which 10 people were killed. AFP