Two people were killed and one was injured at a school in northern Slovakia on Thursday after a student stabbed a teacher and two classmates, authorities said.

The stabbings took place in Spisska Stara Ves, a town of 17,000 people on the border with Poland, the Slovak rescue service said.

The suspect, an 18-year-old student, fled the scene after the attack but was arrested a short time later, according to authorities One person is in critical condition, they said.

Local media reported that the deputy head of the school was among the casualties.

Several emergency medical crews were responding at the scene, Slovakian broadcaster TA3 reported. Further details were not immediately available.

Interior Minister Matúš Šutaj Eštok and Education Minister Tomáš Drucker travelled to the town on Thursday to offer their condolences to the relatives of the victims.

Drucker said he will work to protect students and teachers from similar attacks.

President Peter Pellegrini called the attack “a real tragedy” and offered condolences along with Prime Minister Robert Fico to the relatives.

“No problem in the world can be solved with a knife or any other weapon,” Pellegrini said.

Such attacks are rare in Slovakia, although there have been a couple of similar incidents in recent years.

In 2020, a 22-year-old former student attacked a school in the town of Vrutky, killing the deputy principal of the high school and wounding five people, including two students. In 2022, a high school student attacked and injured a female pupil at a school in Novaky.

Additional sources • AP