Poland has stepped up security measures after a series of violent attacks at schools alarmed the country and raised fears of further similar incidents. Prime Minister Donald Tusk called the events a serious warning and ordered a greater police presence, along with daily patrols inside schools.
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The most serious attack took place on Thursday at a primary school in the village of Leszczydół-Noëiny, northeast of Warsaw. A 15-year-old former student stabbed a 37-year-old school employee and mother of two in the neck, killing her. The headteacher and a teacher stopped the attacker, but both were injured during the intervention. The teenager was arrested at the scene. He was carrying three knives and wearing a helmet with a camera, which he is suspected of having intended to use to record the incident.
A day before the attack, a 19-year-old injured nine people with a sharp object at a vocational school in Ostrołęka. The injured included students, teachers and passers-by. When police searched his bag, they also found an unexploded homemade bomb. On the same day, authorities in Sierpc arrested a 17-year-old suspected of planning to attack the school he attended.
Investigators are examining whether the incidents may be connected to so-called violent challenges on social media. So far, however, no evidence has been found directly linking the incidents to one another. Messages circulating online about a so-called “Bloody Friday” heightened fears and led to the closure of several schools.
Poland’s Minister of Digital Affairs, Krzysztof Gawkowski, called claims that there was a nationwide organized challenge disinformation. Meanwhile, police have carried out checks at around 10,000 schools and educational institutions. Ten people have been arrested over threats circulated online, three of them minors.
The incidents have once again brought the radicalization of young people through digital platforms to the center of public debate. Poland’s parliament has passed a law allowing criminal content to be removed from the internet more quickly. Whether the law takes effect is now up to President Karol Nawrocki, who vetoed a similar initiative in January.
In Poland, where incidents of this kind at schools have been relatively rare until now, the attacks have caused shock and heightened concerns about student safety and the influence of violent content online.
