French language teacher Dominique Bernard, 57, was stabbed to death in the playground of City School Gambetta-Carnot in Arras, northern France, on Friday morning.
After injuring three other members of staff, police arrested the suspected attacker, named as 20-year-old Chechen Mohamed Mogouchkov.
Details emerging from the investigation so far reveal he cried “Allahu Akbar!” – Arabic for “God is greatest!” – at the time, suggesting a link between his actions and the Global Day of Jihad called for that day by Hamas leader Khaled Mashal.
After visiting the school later in the day, President Emmanuel Macron claimed the school was “struck by the barbarity of Islamist terrorism”.
He added: “The teacher who was killed had come forward to protect others and without doubt saved many lives.”
Mr Bernard, married to an English teacher at the school and the father of three girls, was seen confronting the suspect as he entered the playground wielding two knives.
He died as a result of stab wounds to the throat and chest.
A school security guard is also in critical condition, and a teacher and cleaner were also hurt, but no pupils were harmed according to a police source.
Mr Moguchkov, who hails from Russia’s mainly Muslim southern Caucasus region of Chechnya, was already flagged with a “Fiche S” as a potential security threat by police, and under surveillance by France’s domestic intelligence agency the DGSI.
His family came to France as asylum seekers from Russia back in 2008 and successfully defeated a deportation order in 2014.
In his Friday statement to the press in Arras, Mr Macron said: “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.”
On October 16, 2020, 47-year-old history and geography teacher Samuel Paty was decapitated by Abdoullakh Abouyezidovich Anzorov, 18, also of Chechen origin.
While the president refrained from tying Mr Bernard’s killing directly to the escalation in the Gaza Strip, Interior Minister Gérald Darmanin later said there was “probably a link between what’s happening in the Middle East and this incident.”
More than 1,900 Palestinians in the Gaza Strip have died as a result of the near-constant shelling of the enclave by the Israel Defense Forces (IDF), in retaliation for Hamas’s brutal attack a week ago.
France is one of the most multicultural societies in Europe, home to some five million Muslims and around half a million Jews. Flare-ups in the Middle East have often translated into violent confrontations in the country.
On Saturday, the French government confirmed it would deploy 7,000 soldiers to maintain order after declaring a top-level alert on Friday.
Controversially, on Thursday the Elysee banned pro-Palestinian protests nationwide – arguing they were “likely to generate disturbances to public order” – and declaring that organisers would face arrest.
Commenting on that issue, the French president said: “Those who confuse the Palestinian cause and the justification of terrorism commit a strong moral, political and strategic error.”
