9 wounded in stabbing spree at school

WARSAW (Poland): A 19-year-old on Wednesday stabbed nine people with a knife at his vocational school in Poland, north of the capital Warsaw, wounding students, teachers and passers-by.

The teen was arrested after the rampage at a school in Ostroleka, 120 kilometres from Warsaw, said police, who released a blurred photo following his arrest.

Mariusz Frankowski, the top local official, said five students, two teachers and two passers-by were injured.

“The lives of none of the injured are in danger,” Mariusz Zeranski, Ostroleka police spokesman, told reporters.

Elzbieta Lukasiewicz from the Ostroleka prosecutor’s office said: “The boy entered the school and attacked the students and teachers with a dangerous tool.”

The teen was arrested by the police about 20 minutes after the attack, not far away from the school.

He was treated by emergency services after having “self-harmed,” the prosecutor’s office said.

He is now out of hospital and in police custody.

Bomb disposal experts took away a bag the assailant had left at the high school.

The school was closed as a precautionary measure.

The attack comes just a few days after a priest was stabbed by a Ukrainian in a monastery in a Polish region near Ukraine.

Social networks on Wednesday were again full of rumours that the attacker was Ukrainian.

But local prefect Frankowski confirmed the attacker was Polish in a bid to quash speculation about his nationality.

Poland, a close ally of Ukraine, hosts around 1.5 million Ukrainians, both refugees who fled the Russian invasion in 2022 and economic migrants who have been living in this EU and NATO member state for years.

Since the Russian invasion in 2022, Poland has also been the main hub for transporting Western military and humanitarian aid to Kyiv.

But over the years, public support for refugees has fallen sharply, against a backdrop of unresolved diplomatic tensions between Warsaw and Kyiv.

A row over the civilian massacres committed by both sides during the Second World War notably resurfaced at the beginning of the year. – AFP