Mass stabbing at US high school injures 20

An American student stabbed 19 teenagers and a security guard in a bloody 30-minute rampage in the classrooms and hallways of a Pennsylvania high school yesterday, officials said.
At least four students were critically injured in the shocking assault at Franklin Regional High School, said Thomas Seefeld, chief of police in Murrysville, an outer suburb of Pittsburgh.
The 16-year-old boy walked down a hallway flashing two knives, stabbing fellow pupils and the guard as they began arriving for what should have been a routine school day, Seefeld said.
Nineteen students and one male security guard were injured, mostly in the chest and stomach, officials confirmed.
The school principal and another member of staff tried to overpower the suspect who was then arrested, Seefeld said.
Officials said the assault began at 7:13am was over by 7:45am.
It was not immediately clear what prompted the assailant, who is himself being treated for a hand injury, to attack.
Doctor Mark Rubino at Forbes Regional Hospital, which is treating eight of the victims, said he expected everyone to survive despite what he called "deep penetrating" stab wounds.
Wednesday's attack comes after a long and frequent line of US school shootings that have inflamed a nationwide debate over gun control in the United States.
But even the December 2012 massacre at Sandy Hook Elementary in Newtown, Connecticut, where 20 young children and six adults were shot dead, ultimately failed to tighten gun ownership rules.