Teen boy stabs, wounds female classmate in France
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Police put the French school on lockdown, after a teenage boy stabbed a girl in the abdomen in a school stairwell.
PHOTO: GETTY IMAGES/ISTOCKPHOTO
- A student in Ancenis, France, stabbed a 15-year-old classmate in the abdomen with a kitchen knife due to a "personal dispute".
- Teachers isolated the attacker, and police detained him as the school went into lockdown, confining 700 pupils to classrooms.
- The victim was gravely wounded, and this incident is one of several school stabbings that have occurred in France recently (AFP).
AI generated
RENNES, France - A 15-year-old at a French school on April 10 stabbed and gravely wounded a female schoolmate over a “personal dispute”, officials said, in the latest knife attack in the country.
The teenager stabbed the girl, also 15, in a stairwell of the high school in the western town of Ancenis, gravely wounding her in the stomach, a local prosecutor said, adding his office had opened a probe into “attempted murder”.
The suspect “was quickly subdued and disarmed by the headmaster”, said Mr Antoine Leroy, the prosecutor in the nearby city of Nantes.
The teenager, who had previously showed suicidal tendencies, “may have had quite a strong friendship” with the victim, Mr Leroy said.
A local state official earlier mentioned a “personal dispute”.
Students gathered outside the school gates, which were guarded by police officers, an AFP journalist observed.
“I was confined to the gym for an hour or an hour and a half... it was very distressing,” a 17-year-old student told AFP.
Police seized the knife and a pair of scissors from the scene, as well as several other knives discovered in the suspect’s bag, the prosecutor said.
Police put the school on lockdown as they responded.
Around 700 pupils were confined to classrooms and 150 to the gym, a source with knowledge of the matter said.
Several school stabbings have rocked France in recent months.
In February, a 14-year-old stabbed an art teacher in southern France at least three times, leaving the 60-year-old in critical condition.
A 14-year-old student in June 2025 fatally stabbed a teaching assistant in eastern France.
In another, a student carried out a stabbing spree in several classrooms in April 2025, wounding a girl and three other pupils. AFP
