00:00 France 24's James Vecina following this story.
00:02 James, what is the latest you can tell us right now?
00:05 - The latest, as you say,
00:06 apparently from what we understand
00:07 is from the end of the morning
00:09 that the attacker arrived at the school
00:11 around 11 a.m. here, French time.
00:13 And he was in the north of France, Arras,
00:15 which is very much to the north,
00:17 and has killed one teacher and two other people,
00:20 from what we understand,
00:21 members of staff are seriously wounded,
00:23 one of them being a security agent.
00:26 Now the question, of course,
00:26 that comes into mind straight away is,
00:30 what was, did he have a link to the school?
00:33 Was he a former student?
00:34 We don't know yet.
00:35 We know he's been arrested.
00:36 We know that his brother has also been arrested,
00:38 and the two then of Chechen origin.
00:41 From now, the police says that things are under control.
00:44 There's no serious threats after that,
00:46 as of now, outside the school,
00:48 and that the anti-terrorism office
00:51 has now opened, then, an investigation.
00:53 This because the attacker shouted,
00:56 "Alaouette," about at least once,
00:57 whilst carrying out the attack,
00:58 and he was, as you mentioned there,
01:00 on the registry, Fichier S,
01:03 as it's known here in France,
01:04 which is a registry for radicalized individuals.
01:07 The president, Emmanuel Macron,
01:08 is on his way, then, to the school,
01:11 but from what we understand,
01:12 the situation is now under control there.
01:14 - And unfortunately, James,
01:15 this is not the first time that a teacher
01:18 has been the target of a deadly attack here in France.
01:22 - What springs to mind straight away, again,
01:23 is that just almost three years ago to the day
01:26 is when Samuel Petit was killed
01:29 just outside Paris, in the west of Paris.
01:32 He was killed outside the school
01:33 after showing images of the Prophet Mohammed
01:37 within the classrooms.
01:40 That happens, and that, of course,
01:41 shocks everybody, and it still feels very, very fresh,
01:44 and so hearing about this doesn't feel
01:45 like this was anything that far away,
01:48 but since then, of course,
01:50 there's been a lot of talk about freedom of speech
01:52 within schools, it's created a lot of debate.
01:55 The attacker, Samuel Petit's attacker,
01:57 was killed on the spot, unlike what's happened today,
02:00 from what we've understood is that the attacker
02:02 has been then arrested in a different way,
02:05 but look, this is French schools
02:07 that have not shone in the best of lights recently.
02:10 It's a different story, but there's been a lot going on
02:14 about harassment within schools,
02:16 and student suicides because of harassment
02:19 that they've had to undergo within schools,
02:23 but again, this creates what is not,
02:27 what is supposed to be a safe space
02:28 is not one at the moment, so the priority, clearly,
02:30 within the whole of these things,
02:31 even though they're not connected,
02:33 is to bring this safety back to students,
02:35 which is supposed to be schools,
02:37 a place where they're not supposed to be
02:38 fearing anything like this, and of course, again,
02:41 this is an attack on a teacher,
02:42 where they're supposed to be able to work
02:44 without having to have these kind of worries, of course.
02:48 - James Fasina, you'll be updating us regularly
02:51 on the program.
02:52 Of course, as we said, this is a developing story,
02:53 so we do expect details to change throughout the day.
02:57 Thank you for keeping us updated.
02:58 (laughing)
