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At least two girls have been seriously wounded and a 16-year-old suspect arrested after an attack at a secondary school in the southern German state of Bavaria on Wednesday.
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The perpetrator appeared to have deliberately targeted the Welfen grammar school in the town of Schongau in a suspected “rampage,” a police spokesperson told the AFP news agency.
She was unable to confirm press reports which claimed the assailant used a knife in the attack.
Local police said on their X account that “a suspected perpetrator has been arrested,” later adding that this was a “16-year-old boy.”
Initially the police had spoken of “several” injured and later on Wednesday afternoon said that “according to current information two girls have been seriously injured.”
They said that the “girls’ lives are not in danger” and did not specify whether they were students at the school.
Police said they are “currently assuming that the perpetrator acted alone.”
‘Major operation’
Police said people should avoid the area following the incident in Schongau, a town just north of the Alps of some 12,000 inhabitants.
“A major police operation is underway. We are on site with numerous forces.”
A contact point has been set up for parents and relatives of the school’s pupils at Schongau’s fire station.
The Bild daily reported that six helicopters had been deployed by police, including one to treat the wounded.
One of the helicopters was also used in the search for the suspect, who was briefly on the run before being found and apprehended by police.
Serious violence at schools and other educational institutions is rare but not unknown in Germany.
Last year, a 45-year-old teacher was seriously wounded at a vocational college in the western city of Essen.
The prime suspect, a 17-year-old Kosovan was shot by police before his arrest. Prosecutors accuse of him of acting out of “jihadist” motivations.
In January 2022, an 18-year-old German shot dead a student in a lecture hall at the University of Heidelberg and wounded three other students, before turning the gun on himself.
On 11 March 2009, a 17-year-old teenager, Tim Kretschmer, carried out a massacre at his former secondary school in Winnenden, near Stuttgart.
He killed 15 people, nine students, three teachers and three passersby, before killing himself.
And in 2002, a 19-year-old gunman killed 16 people, including 12 teachers and two pupils, at a school in the eastern city of Erfurt.
Additional sources • AFP
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