Two 13-year-old girls were seriously injured in an attack at Welfen-Gymnasium, a secondary school in Schongau, Upper Bavaria, on Wednesday. A 16-year-old suspect was arrested at the scene, and police believe the individual acted alone, according to BBC.

Neither of the injured girls faces immediate life-threatening danger, police said. The full scope of the incident is still coming into focus. Authorities said they were still working to establish whether anyone else was hurt and, if so, how seriously — details they hadn't finalized as of their latest statements.

Police have not confirmed what weapon was used. A police spokeswoman told AFP that it remained unclear what instrument caused the injuries, and she declined to confirm reports circulating in media describing it as a knife attack. That gap matters: in cases like this, authorities typically move cautiously on such details until they're certain. Police have described the incident as a Amoklauf — a German term for an indiscriminate assault where the attacker targets people with no particular connection to them, rather than an assault aimed at specific individuals in some kind of dispute. Whether that description holds depends on details that are still being investigated.

The suspect's identity has not been released. It remains unclear whether the 16-year-old had any prior connection to the school — whether as a current student, former student, or not. That detail will likely shape how investigators understand motive, and whether the case is treated as a targeted act or a broader public-safety incident.

Police and rescue workers deployed quickly to the school following the attack, according to Rhein-Zeitung and FAZ/dpa, both citing Germany's dpa wire service. Authorities set up a family contact point at a fire station in Schongau — a standard step in German school crises designed to centralize information for parents away from the school building itself, reducing confusion and preventing crowds from gathering at the scene.

Welfen-Gymnasium has deep roots in the region. Founded in 1887, it operated almost entirely as a girls' school before becoming co-educational about four decades ago, according to BBC reporting. Schongau is a small town in Upper Bavaria, so an incident this serious at a single secondary school carries outsized weight in the community — the kind of event that shapes local conversation for months.

German authorities and media typically move with care in the immediate aftermath of school violence, holding back suspect names and weapon details until confirmation — which explains the careful language here, where police have not confirmed even widely reported specifics like whether a knife was involved. This caution stems from German privacy law, which restricts identifying juvenile suspects, and from standard investigative practice of not confirming details before they're verified.

The initial classification of a rampage rather than a targeted assault carries real procedural consequences in Germany. Such cases typically trigger specific prosecutorial and mental-health evaluation steps given that the suspect is a minor. If the rampage designation holds and investigators find no prior connection between the suspect and victims, the incident will likely draw comparisons to earlier cases of school violence in Germany — events that have periodically sparked broader conversations about youth mental health services, weapons access, and school security. But any such discussion would be premature. The immediate focus remains on facts that investigators have not yet confirmed: what weapon was used, the suspect's background, and whether any connection to the school exists.

What is clear so far is straightforward but significant: two young victims injured, one suspect in custody, and a police force still assembling the basic facts. Weapon details, information about the suspect's background, and any connection to the school are expected as the investigation advances.