A 16-year-old student was killed and a classmate of the same age was seriously injured this Monday in an attack with gun committed by a former student at a school in southern Brazil, the authorities reported.

The incident occurred in an educational center in the metropolitan region Londrina, a city in the interior of the southern state of Paraná. The attacker was arrested. “A former student came in armed”, after showing up at school to “request his school records”the government of Paraná said in a statement.

Once inside, “He shot two people. A 16-year-old student died on the spot” and the other student, the same age, attacked“He is being hospitalized in very serious condition,” the state government said.

The local press reported that the attacker is 21 years old. Authorities are investigating the attacker’s motivation was stopped by a teacher. The teacher “had recent training and the police arrived at the school in just three minutes, preventing an even greater tragedy,” said Paraná governor Carlos Ratinho Junior, who declared three days of mourning in the state.

Brazil’s President Luiz Inácio Lula da Silva received the news with “sadness and outrage”. “Another young life stolen by hatred and violence that we can no longer tolerate in our schools and society,” the president tweeted.

The number of attacks on schools in Brazil has recently increased, and authorities attribute this increase in part to the “apology of violence” circulating on social networks. “The apology for violence is today in the palm of our youth’s hands, on smartphones, on tablets, in the irresponsible dissemination of messages of violence and hatred on the Internet,” Brazil’s Justice Minister Flávio Dino said at a event in Rio de Janeiro.

In April, four children between the ages of 4 and 7 were murdered in a nursery in Blumenauin Santa Catarina (south), by a man who attacked them with an axe. The killings shocked the country and the federal government announced measures to regulate social networks to combat growing threats against schools.

One of the deadliest attacks in recent years is also the 2019 murder of eight people at a high school in Suzano, on the outskirts of Sao Paulo. The authors, two former students, later committed suicide.

The worst recorded in Brazil happened in 2011: 12 children were killed when a man opened fire at their former kindergarten in Realengo, a suburb of Rio de Janeiro, before committing suicide.