More than 20,000 police deployed to schools across Poland after series of stabbings

Police in Poland began a nationwide school security operation on Monday after three stabbing attacks in recent days.The spate of incidents has prompted Polish Prime Minister Donald Tusk to confront what he described as a growing trend of youth violence.Rumours that the attacks were linked to an organised group or an online challenge have been dismissed by authorities, but Mr Tusk said at a crisis meeting on Sunday that violence was being glorified in some parts of the internet, and this was having a damaging effect on young people."We have observed a rise in the fascination with violence, both in Poland and worldwide ... we are witnessing a grim trend of violence," he said. Content promoting Nazi ideology and a "cult of strength", as well as violent computer games, were major factors, he added.Poland's Prime Minister Donald Tusk (AFP/Getty)On Sunday evening, Poland’s Interior Minister Marcin Kierwinski said that police would be deploying more than 20,000 officers to schools on Monday."A clear message is required: there will be no tolerance for any attacks on Polish children, nor for the descent of public life into anarchy," Mr Kierwinski said.On Monday, police said they had detained 135 people since Friday after inspecting 80,000 schools.In one incident, a boy, who was found to possess a gun, ammunition and knives, created a model of his school in the video game Roblox and simulated attacks on students, police said.Police officers guard the scene of a knife attack at a vocational school in the town of Ostroleka (AFP/Getty)The latest stabbing attack occurred on Saturday, when three people were injured at a further education college in Warsaw, Poland's third stabbing attack at an educational institution in four days.On Thursday last week, a 15-year-old former pupil wearing a helmet-mounted camera killed a caretaker and injured two teachers at a primary school in Leszczydol-Nowiny, northeast of Warsaw.The day before, a 19-year-old wounded 10 people including himself at a school in Ostroleka, north of the capital.Four students, two teachers and two passersby were injured in that attack, Elżbieta Edyta Łukasiewicz, a spokesperson for prosecutors, told the Polish news agency PAP. None of the injuries were life-threatening, but one person was seriously wounded and some victims were evacuated by helicopter to a hospital, she said.