School where teacher was stabbed to death in France evacuated over bomb threat

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A high school where a teacher was fatally stabbed in France was evacuated on Monday morning following a bomb threat.

While there were no classes scheduled at City School Gambetta-Carnot, its doors were open for pupils and staff to pay tribute to teacher Dominique Bernard.

Mr Bernard was killed in the attack in the northern town of Arras on Friday at around 11am, that left two other members of staff in critical condition.

Teachers, some of them in tears and holding each other, and pupils who had come to lay flowers were forced to leave the building during the alert on Monday.

The prefecture of the northern Pas-de-Calais region said the decision was made to evacuate the school after police received a threat via its website.

As a police bomb squad arrived, teachers and students gathered in the courtyard of a building opposite their school as civil protection personnel comforted them.

France is on heightened alert against feared terror threats following the stabbing incident.

Schools across the country will hold a moment of silence after the teacher was killed and three other people were injured last week in the attack by a former student suspected of Islamic radicalisation.

Hours following the attack, Emmanuel Macron visited the school, describing the attack as the result of “barbaric Islamist terrorism”, before praising the teacher.

“The teacher who was killed had come forward to protect others and had without doubt saved many lives,” he said.

Counter-terrorism authorities are investigating the stabbing, and the suspected assailant and several others are in custody, prosecutors said. The suspect had been under recent surveillance by intelligence services for radicalisation.

The prosecutor said the alleged assailant was a former student there and repeatedly shouted “Allahu akbar” - “God is great” - during the attack.

Another teacher and a security guard are in a critical condition with wounds from the stabbing, police said. The counter-terrorism prosecutor said a cleaning worker was also injured.

The attack comes during a rise in tension in the country as a result of the Israel-Hamas conflict.

After a security meeting on Monday, interior minister Gerald Darmanin said that 102 people have been arrested in relation with antisemitic acts or inciting terrorism since the war began on October 7.