An art teacher was fighting for her life in France today after being stabbed ‘three or four times’ by a teenage pupil.
The 60-year-old woman, who has not been named, was set upon by the 14-year-pupil at La Guicharde middle school in Sanary-sur-Mer, in the south of the country, between Toulon and Marseille, on Tuesday.
The victim was taken to hospital ‘in a critical condition,’ while the attacker, who also remains unidentified, was arrested for ‘attempted murder,’ said a local police spokesman.
‘There were three or four stabs – two in the abdomen and one or two in the arm’ said another investigating source, who said the boy ‘had been shouting threats at the teacher’ beforehand.
Édouard Geffray, France’s education minister, said he would be ‘going to the scene immediately’ as he expressed ‘profound shock’ at what had happened.
If follows a series of knife attacks on teachers in French schools, some of them motivated by terrorism.
In October 2023, a French literature teacher was stabbed to death at the Gambetta-Carnot school in Arras, northern France.
Three other members of staff were injured in the onslaught by alleged ISIS supporter Mohammed Mogouchkov, a 20-year-old, who remains on remand and awaiting trial.
Three years before, teacher Samuel Paty was beheaded by another Islamist terrorist in Éragny, the Paris suburb.
The perpetrator, Abdoullakh Abouyezidovich Anzorov, an 18-year-old Russian refugee, was shot and killed by police minutes later.
Last September, a 66-year-old music teacher was attacked with a knife at a middle school in Benfeld, in eastern France.
And last last June, a supervisor at the Françoise Dolto middle school in Nogent, also near Paris, died after a knife attack by a student.
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