Students at a school in Bremerhaven, northern Germany, used chairs and tables to barricade themselves in their classrooms after several shots were fired at the building, seriously injuring an adult woman.
Police in Bremerhaven say an armed attacker used an unidentified weapon to injure a female employee at the Lloyd Gymnasium secondary school on Thursday morning.
The newspaper Nordwest-Zeitung reported the man had used a crossbow in the attack, while other media reported that the man was also carrying a handgun.
“The armed person was detained and is in police custody,” the police said in a statement, which did not confirm rumours of a second attacker nor offer any information on a possible motive.
The injured person had been taken to hospital, it said. Students and their teachers remained in their classrooms while police continued to investigate the situation, but were allowed to leave the school premises at 12.20pm.
The online newspaper Nord24 said a schoolgirl who heard shots had called the police.
Lloyd Gymnasium is a secondary school in the upper bracket of Germany’s tripartite secondary education system, preparing students for higher education at university.
Usually hosting around 700 students, local media reported that only about 200 students were in the building on Grazer Strasse on Thursday, to resit their final-year school exams.
