Two 13-year-old girls have been seriously injured and a 16-year-old suspect arrested following an attack at a secondary school in Schongau, a town of around 12,000 people on the banks of the river Lech in Upper Bavaria, southern Germany. Police confirmed the incident took place at the Welfen-Gymnasium, a school of approximately 800 students, and described it as a possible rampage. Both girls were taken to hospital and are not in life-threatening condition.

Authorities say the suspect was found carrying both a knife and a firearm. According to Germany's federal interior minister Alexander Dobrindt, the attacker fired the weapon once without hitting anyone before it jammed, then drew a knife. Teachers and police officers were able to overpower him quickly. Bavaria's state interior minister Joachim Herrmann said he believed the two girls were stabbed and were likely random victims, though police had not formally confirmed this. A significant number of students are reported to have witnessed the violence, and helicopters circled overhead as police cordoned off the area around the school.

The identity and motive of the suspect remain unclear. Police believe he acted alone. Herrmann indicated that the suspect had previously received psychiatric treatment and that there were unconfirmed indications he may have been a former student of the school. Investigators have not yet established whether he had any direct link to the Welfen-Gymnasium. A support point for parents and relatives of students was set up at a local fire station.

The Welfen-Gymnasium, founded in 1887 and initially almost exclusively a girls' school, has been co-educational for the last four decades. The attack comes in the final weeks of the Bavarian school year. Why this matters: school attacks remain deeply alarming events in Germany, where such incidents are relatively rare, and this case will likely renew debate about security measures in schools and the treatment of young people with mental health needs.