POLICE arrested five youths in connection with assaulting and injuring five people at a Limassol school on Thursday.
Police said four18-year-olds and a 22-year-old were remanded in custody for three days after a group of around 25 club wielding youths barged into the 3rd Technical School, leaving five people injured, including two who needed treatment in hospital.
The motive behind the assault is said to be differences over a recent Futsal match between the two schools.
One of the two treated in hospital had been threatened before the assault.
Education Minister Andreas Demetriou dismissed suggestions that delinquency was taking over.
“I do not accept the suggestion that we are not doing well with delinquency,” the minister said. “We have very low percentages in relation with other European countries and in no way I am trying to play down the problem.”
Demetriou said that as a society, “we have a delinquency problem; we are a society which frequently produces and reinforces aggressiveness, often resulting in seeing it expressed inside the school.”
He said it is not an exclusive problem of the educational system.
ON Thursday a group of round 25 club wielding youths barged into the Limassol school looking for a 16-year-old they had threatened.
When they spotted him in a corridor they pounced on him and started to beat him.
Reports said that over the previous days the 16-year-old had received threatening text messages on his mobile.
Two other students who tried to help the teen him were also assaulted, as was a female teacher trying break up the fracas.
While leaving the school grounds, the perpetrators hit another teacher who was trying to keep his students away.
The 16-year-old and another student were treated at first aid, mainly for wounds on the face, arms and legs.
The incident again raiseed questions over security on school grounds. Police say they simply do not have the resources to place guards or patrol every school.
A spate of similar, though less serious, incidents occurred in February and March, with both students and teachers attacked in the classroom by outsiders.
