Bratislava:

A teenager killed a fellow student and a teacher and wounded a third woman in a knife attack at a secondary school in northeastern Slovakia on Thursday.

The 18-year-old was taken into custody shortly after the crime, police said.

“Two women, aged 18 and 51, suffered fatal injuries,” Danka Kapakova from Slovakia’s emergency service told AFP.

“An 18-year-old female suffered moderate injuries and was transported to the hospital,” he added.

Police had earlier said on Facebook that a female teacher and two students were attacked.

The stabbings took place in the town of Speska Stara Wies near the border with Poland, about 280 kilometers (175 miles) northeast of the capital Bratislava.

Kapakova said the emergency service “sent several ambulance crews to Speska Stara Ves Grammar School before 13:00 (1200 GMT) today.”

Kapakova said doctors also treated a 51-year-old man and a 62-year-old woman at the site “for severe stress reactions”.

Police identified the attacker as 18-year-old student “SS” and appealed to the public for help as he initially managed to escape.

He also posted a photo in which he is seen with cropped blonde hair.

The private TV station Marqueza said the student had moved to school from another school in the nearby town of Kezmarok after being expelled for threatening to attack fellow students.

‘The True Tragedy’

Slovak Interior Minister Matas Sutaj Estek condemned the crime, offered his condolences to the families of the victims and said he was visiting the scene.

Calling the attack a true tragedy, Slovak President Peter Pellegrini said: “No problem in the world can be solved with a knife or any other weapon”.

“Hatred and violence have no place in our society, let alone in schools where young people feel safe,” the secondary schools’ student council said on Instagram.

In 2020, a teacher was stabbed to death and several others were injured at an elementary school in central Slovakia, the first violent attack at a school in the country.

Officers responding to the incident killed the assailant, a 22-year-old former student, as he attempted to flee.

Elsewhere in Europe, in December 2024, a seven-year-old student was killed and several others injured in a knife attack at a school in the Croatian capital, Zagreb.

In 2023, Serbia was rocked by a series of mass shootings, including a massacre at a school in the capital Belgrade that left 10 dead.

(Other than the headline, this story has not been edited by NDTV staff and is published from a syndicated feed.)



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