Deadly school attacks in Europe

Trollhdttan, Sweden: The sword attack on Thursday by a masked man who killed two people and seriously wounded two others in a Swedish school remains a rare event in western Europe.

Below are some other fatal attacks in European schools over the past 13 years:

— February 19, 2002: GERMANY — A 22-year old man kills the headmaster in a professional training college that he had attended in Freising, near Munich. He had previously killed two workers in the decorations factory from which he had just been fired. He then commits suicide.

— April 26, 2002: GERMANY — A student, 19, who is angry at having been expelled from his school at Erfurt in eastern Germany guns down 16 people there, including 12 teachers and two students. He then kills himself.

— November 7, 2007: FINLAND — An 18-year-old student opens fire in a school at Tuusula in southern Finland, killing six pupils, the headmistress and the nurse before turning his gun on himself.

— September 23, 2008: FINLAND — Eleven people, including the gunman, die in a massacre at a training school at Kauhajoki, western Finland.

— March 11, 2009: GERMANY — Nine pupils, three teachers and three passers-by are killed in a school shooting at Winnenden in southern Germany by a former pupil, 17, who then kills himself.

— March 19, 2012: FRANCE — Islamist Mohammad Merah guns down three students and a teacher at a Jewish school in the southern city of Toulouse, after shooting dead three soldiers. He is killed by police commandos after a 32-hour siege of his apartment.