A 19-year-old student attacks a vocational school in Ostrołęka with a machete

A 19-year-old student attacked people with a machete at a vocational school in Ostrołęka, in north-eastern Poland, on Wednesday morning. Masovian regional governor Mariusz Frankowski said ten people were injured. Nine were taken to hospital. None, he said, was in a life-threatening condition. The injured were five students, two teachers, two bystanders, and the attacker himself, who had inflicted self-harm.

Police said the suspect was a student at the school. They detained him about 20 minutes after the attack, near the town beach on the Narew, and posted a photograph of a man lying face down in a wooded area. Town hall spokesperson Katarzyna Ogniewska said every school in Ostrołęka was closed and that the children were safe. Fire brigade spokesperson Adrian Stupski told TVP Info that students had barricaded themselves in classrooms before evacuation.

The counts do not yet agree, and that disagreement is the useful part of the first-day record. An earlier Reuters account, citing police, put the injured at seven and described the figure as tentative. RMF FM reported two serious injuries among those seven. Euronews, citing police, also said seven were hurt and two were in a serious condition. Frankowski's later briefing named ten, including the attacker, and said none was life-threatening. TVN24's account settled on nine wounded besides the handling of the suspect: five pupils, two teachers and two people in a park near the school. Anyone using a single number from Wednesday morning is using a number that moved.

The school is Zespół Szkół Zawodowych nr 4, a vocational complex for teenagers. Prosecutor Elżbieta Łukasiewicz, spokeswoman for the district prosecutor's office, said the student, identified as Jakub Z., entered the building with a dangerous tool and attacked pupils and teachers. He was held 400 to 500 metres away, in the area of the municipal beach. The district prosecutor's office opened an investigation into attempted murder. Authorities placed the attack at about 09:00 GMT, which is 11:00 local time. Euronews put the start a few minutes after 11:00.

National prosecutor Dariusz Korneluk told TVN24 that bomb disposal experts found a homemade explosive device in the attacker's backpack, and that it nearly detonated. That claim is not in every early police line. It changes the case from a knife attack inside a school to a case that also includes an explosive that did not go off. The bag was still being checked when the first wire copy moved.

Ostrołęka is a Masovian town on the Narew, not a city that usually appears in European crime briefs. The detention point is specific: the municipal beach, a short run from the school, not a roadblock on the edge of the voivodeship. The weapon described by police is a machete, not a folding knife. The bystanders were in the park, which means the attack was not confined to a corridor.

Poland has no settled public account yet of motive, of how the student brought the tool into the building, or of whether anyone else knew about the bag. The prosecutor has a name initial, a distance from the school, and an attempted-murder file. The governor has a hospital count that includes the attacker and excludes a life-threatening injury. Those two statements can both be true. They are not the same statement.

The open question is the bag. If Korneluk's account of a device that nearly detonated holds, the school closure across the town is about more than a student with a blade. If it does not, Wednesday's record will have to be cut back to the machete, the beach, and a hospital list that was still being revised at dusk.