Schools in France will start late and hold a minute's silence on Monday following a suspected terrorist attack on a high school in which one teacher was killed and two other staff were injured. Thousands of people gathered in northern France on Sunday to pay tribute to the victim, French literature teacher Dominique Bernard.
Bernard was stabbed to death on Friday at the Gambetta high school in Arras, a city in north-eastern France.
Police have arrested a suspect, a former student of Chechen origin who was on France's terror watch list, and a maximum security alert is in place nationwide.
Middle and high schools across the country will start at 10am on Monday, two hours later than usual, to give teachers time to meet between themselves before class, the Education Ministry announced over the weekend.
A minute of silence will take place at 2pm that afternoon.
On Sunday, some 5,000 people gathered in the centre of Arras for a memorial to Bernard and the other victims.
"There are no words to describe this barbaric act, there are no words to ease the pain," said local mayor Frédéric Leturque.
Students paid tribute to Bernard, 57, a father of three who had been teaching at the school since the 1980s.
"He was always there for us, he was really an extraordinary person," final-year student Victoire, 17, told French news agency AFP.
Security concerns
Teachers' unions have called for authorities to step up protection for staff and pupils after the attack, which came three years to the week after teacher Samuel Paty was murdered near his school in a Paris suburb.
"I want to tell all teachers: we will be there to guarantee your safety," Prime Minister Elisabeth Borne said on Saturday, at a ceremony to award a prize for high school students in Paty's honour.
"When a teacher is attacked, it isn't only the French Republic that is targeted: it is a threat to its entire future," Borne said.
"We will not give an inch to violence. We will face it and we will fight it."
Surveillance system questioned
Eleven people have been arrested so far in connection with the attack, including chief suspect Mohammed Moguchkov and several members of his family. Nine remained in custody as of Sunday evening, a police source told France Télévisions.
The French government has denied failures by its surveillance services, who were monitoring Moguchkov on suspicion of involvement in Islamist extremism.
Moguchkov, who was born in Russia's mainly Muslim region of Chechnya, was already on a French national register known as "Fichier S" as a potential security threat and under active surveillance by France's domestic intelligence agency.
"We can't follow everyone who's under suspicion," said Justice Minister Eric Dupond-Moretti.
"Fichier S is a working tool for the intelligence services. People on there have not been convicted," he told French radio on Sunday.
Interior Minister Gérald Darminin has nonetheless announced the "systematic expulsion" of all foreign nationals on the watch list who are deemed to pose a security threat.
While the majority of the roughly 5,100 people on the register are French citizens, Darminin said he had requested that those who immigrated to France be stripped of their residence permits if they have them, a process that will have to go through the courts.
Moguchkov arrived in France as a child in 2008. He was on authorities' radar because of his father, who was also on the list and was deported in 2018.
