Teacher killed in knife attack at school in northern France

A knifeman killed a teacher and injured three other people at a secondary school in the northern French city of Arras in what is being investigated as a terrorist attack.

President Emmanuel Macron on Friday declared that the Gambetta high school had been “hit by the barbarism of Islamist terror” and lauded the bravery of the school staff and police who quickly neutralised the assailant.

France raised its security alert to the highest level on Friday night.

The police are still investigating the motives of the attack, and the suspected perpetrator has been arrested.

A French official said the attacker, who was of Chechen origin, yelled “Allahu akbar” during the incident, and was on a watchlist of people known as a security risk in connection to radical Islamism. He was also a former student of the school.

A police official said the brother of the alleged attacker had also been arrested at a nearby high school.

The profile of the suspect and his family is likely to cause controversy amid a national debate on immigration policy. The family came to France as asylum seekers from Russia in 2008 and were subject to a deportation order in 2014, which they fought successfully.

Several of them were on terrorist watchlists held by French intelligence services, and an older brother of the alleged attacker is currently jailed on charges of terrorism conspiracy. The suspect had recently been placed under surveillance and had been questioned and released by police on Thursday, according to the interior minister.

Macron’s government has been working for months on a draft law that would make it easier to deport people who stayed in the country illegally, but it has failed to get the votes to pass the measure. 

Speaking in Arras, Macron drew a parallel to another traumatic attack that rocked France when a 47-year-old teacher, Samuel Paty, was beheaded by a Chechen Muslim. A history teacher, Paty was targeted for having taught a class on free speech that included showing students cartoons depicting the Prophet Mohammed.

“Almost three years to the day from the assassination of Samuel Paty, it is again in a school that terrorism has struck, and in a context that we all know,” said Macron.

Although Macron stopped short of making a direct link, he appeared to be alluding to the conflict raging between Israel and Hamas, which French officials have been worrying could have repercussions in France.

Around half a million Jews live in France, which is also home to a large Muslim population. In the past, flare-ups in the Israel-Palestinian conflict have translated into an increase in antisemitic incidents against the Jewish community in the country.

Unrest in the Middle East, including the civil war in Syria and the rise of the Islamic State terrorist organisation, also helped unleashed a spree of attacks in France that killed hundreds of people. The worst one was a 2015 assault by Islamic State gunmen who shot concertgoers at the Bataclan theatre and street cafés.

It remains unknown whether Friday’s attack was antisemitic in nature, and little is known about the victims.

Macron had called for national unity in a televised speech on Thursday evening. “Let us not add national fractures to international fractures and let us not give in to any form of hatred,” he said.

In Arras, he vowed that the school would reopen for its usual session on Saturday: “The choice is made to not give into terror, and let nothing divide us. We also need to remember how schools are at the heart of the fight against fundamentalism.”

Speaking on Friday evening, anti-terrorism prosecutor Jean-François Ricard said the investigation was ongoing and that “multiple people have been arrested”.

The national assembly cut short its session in reaction to the killing, and held a moment of silence to commemorate the victims.

But political sniping began soon afterwards. Far-right politician Jordan Bardella slammed Macron’s record on immigration and security and called for the interior minister to resign. Rightwing politician Olivier Marleix said: “This new attack shows the impotence of our state faced with the Islamist plague.”

Additional reporting by Sarah White in Paris

This article has been updated after an earlier version incorrectly said that Samuel Paty was killed in his classroom