A girl was arrested after three people were injured in a knife attack at Co-op Academy in Blackley, Manchester, a school incident that drew emergency services to Plant Hill Road on Monday morning and kept officers on scene into the day.
Greater Manchester Police said just after 09:00 BST that there was not believed to be any wider threat to pupils and staff, but the attack still left three people hurt at the academy. Police said the injuries were not believed to be serious, a detail that did little to lessen the disruption for a school that was still being secured as the response unfolded.
The academy, on Plant Hill Road, remained the focus of a live police operation while emergency services stayed on site and officers supported the school. For pupils, staff and parents trying to make sense of the morning, the reassurance that there was no wider threat sat alongside the reality that a knife attack had already happened inside a school in Manchester.
The school said it would remain closed until the end of the day, a decision that underlined how quickly the incident had turned a normal lesson time into a locked-down response. The immediate question now is not whether the danger spread beyond the academy, because police say it did not, but what led to the attack in the first place and why a school day in Blackley was interrupted by violence at all.
