Two children stabbed near school in France as suspect arrested

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A man has been arrested after two young girls were stabbed near their school in France.

Two children were knifed on Thursday close to a school in the town of Souffelweyersheim in eastern France near Strasbourg, the local authority said.

It added that they were taken to a hospital emergency ward.

AFP reported the victims were two schoolgirls, aged six and 11, and that they were left slightly injured.

A suspect has now been arrested in the area of the incident. The man, born in 1995, did not resist arrest nor did he have a knife in his hand, the Guardian reported police said.

According to the newspaper, the force also said there has so far been no suggestion he had any links with the school. It added that he does not appear to have any known links to radicals and was not known to security services before the attack.

Children were reportedly confined to the school in the aftermath and picked up by parents later in the afternoon.

Before the schoolchildren were allowed to be collected, Sarah, the mother of an eight-year-old pupil, told AFP: “I’m really scared. We’ve been reassured that the children are safe inside, but we don’t know when we’ll be able to get them back.

“A friend called me. She saw the commotion in front of the school as she passed by. Her reflex was to call me so that I could pick up my son.”

It comes as tensions are running high in French schools, with prime minister Gabriel Attal announcing a number of measures as part of a crackdown on violence committed by schoolchildren against their peers.

Just this month, a 14-year-old schoolgirl was left in a coma after being brutally assaulted by three teenagers in the southern city of Montpellier.

The teenager was attacked on 2 April outside Arthur Rimbaud college in the district of La Mosson-La Paillade, prosecutors said, adding that she was “seriously wounded”.

The girl later came out of the medically induced coma but remained “disturbed” and “traumatized”, her mother previously said.

Meanwhile, in October, the president’s office said France was set to mobilise up to 7,000 soldiers to increase security around the country after a teacher was fatally stabbed and three other people wounded in a school attack by a former student.