France: Catholic school teacher murdered in classroom

A language teacher of a Catholic secondary school in the town of Saint-Jean-de Luz (southwest of France, near Bayonne, has been murdered wile she was teaching.

On 22 February, the teacher, named Agnès and aged 52, was giving her Spanish lesson to pupils of the Saint-Thomas d'Aquin private school when a teenager aged 16 entered the classroom with a knife and stabbed her in the chest after locking the classroom's door.

Sources collected by French public broadcaster TF1 say the attacker was disarmed by another teacher. The police said he was "not known to the police or the justice system".

Emergency services arriving to the school were not able to revive the victim. French media said the teacher was a mother of two.

Students were allowed to leave the educational centre gradually and were collected by relatives.

A student told TF1: "It's really very shocking, especially to see the teachers crying, to see the people devastated (...) Everyone is confused, no one is talking. It's not easy to deal with".

France’s Education Minister Pap Ndiaye travelled to the site and was expected to give a press conference in which more details were expected to be known. “I am very moved by the death today of a teacher at the Saint-Thomas-d'Aquin high school in Saint-Jean-de-Luz. My thoughts are with her family, her colleagues and her students”, he said on Twitter.

Immense émotion suite au décès aujourd’hui d’une professeure au lycée Saint-Thomas-d’Aquin à Saint-Jean-de-Luz. Mes pensées pour sa famille, ses collègues et ses élèves. Je me rends sans délai sur place.

— Pap Ndiaye (@PapNdiaye) February 22, 2023

Pap Ndiaye later said all schools in France would hold a minute of silence on the following day.

Authorities have not spoken so far about the motives of the attacker.

A representative of Catholic schools in the country said: "My first thought is for our teacher colleague who lost her life, and for her relatives, whom I assure of our fraternal compassion and our prayers, whatever their convictions", adding, "There is no room today for anything other than pain and grief".

The last teacher killed in France in similar circumstances was Samuel Paty, whose murder was driven by jihadist ideology. Teachers on social media said these fresh attacke "relives the nigthmare" of 2020.