School killings leave stunned Austria and France searching for answers

Parents and governments are left reeling and at a loss how to protect schools from random, deadly violence.

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At about 08:15 on Tuesday, a 14-year-old boy from an ordinary family in Nogent, eastern France, drew out a kitchen knife during a school bag check and fatally stabbed a school assistant.

Not long afterwards in south-east Austria, a 21-year-old who had dropped out of school three years earlier, walked into Dreierschützengasse high school in Graz at 09:43, and shot dead nine students and a teacher with a Glock 19 handgun and a sawn-off shotgun.

In both countries there is a demand for solutions and for a greater focus on young people who resort to such violence.

Austria has never seen a school attack on this scale, but the French stabbing took place during a government programme aimed at tackling the growth in knife crime.