An 18-year old knife-wielding attacker killed three children and two workers at a nursery school in southern Brazil on Tuesday.
The attacker then turned the weapon on to himself gashing his own neck, abdomen and torso and is currently in a critical condition in the hospital, reported AFP.
While the exact age of children was not released, according to BBC News, the three deceased toddlers were all aged under two.
A fourth child was said to be injured in the attack. The motive of the assailant is unknown at the moment.
The incident took place in the small town of Saudades, in Santa Catarina state, southern Brazil, at around 10 am local time. The police said that it received several calls from the neighbours informing them about a man with a machete attacking staff and children in the nursery.
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“When firefighters arrived at the daycare center, they saw an extremely brutal scene. There were already children dead, an employee also,” emergency worker Leonardo Ecco was quoted as saying by the AFP.
Aline Biazebetti, who was near the nursery at the time of the attack, told the news agency she heard people crying for help..
“I went outside and saw my colleagues calling for help: ‘Please, call the police, an armed guy came in and is killing the children’,” she said. “I managed to call the police. They came out with an injured child, so my father got the car and we took him to the hospital.”
Describing the incident as a “horror scene”, municipal education secretary Gisela Hermann told Reuters news agency that a female teacher and an educational assistant were among the dead.
Santa Catarina state Governor Carlos Moises called the attack “devastating news” on his official Twitter profile. “My solidarity with families, the school community and all residents of this welcoming city.”
Additional reporting from the wires
