This Article is From May 12, 2009

German police arrest girl after school attack

Cologne (Germany):

German police have arrested a 16-year-old schoolgirl suspected of having tried to burn down her school using molotov cocktails and of having attacked a fellow student, police said today.

"We've got her," a spokesman for Cologne regional police told AFP, without giving further details. The teenager turned up at her the school, near the western city of Bonn, yesterday morning wearing a mask and armed with several knives, an air gun and a rucksack full of bottles of flammable liquid, prosecutors said.

After an argument with another girl, who apparently wanted to stop her, she produced a knife and cut the girl's hand--half-cutting off her thumb, according to a report in a local daily paper.

The school called in the police, who evacuated the school's 800 students and carried out a thorough search of the premises, but the suspect had already fled the scene. Investigators said they had found a letter left by the teenager. While they refused to reveal its contents, some media reports suggested it had been a farewell letter in which she revealed she had intended to commit an attack. The daily named the girl as Ukrainian national Tanja O. and said she had five kilos (11 pounds) of black powder.

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