SAO PAOLO – A shooter opened fire in a high school in Sao Paulo, Brazil, on Monday, killing a 17-year-old girl and leaving three other students wounded, the authorities said.

Officials said police arrested the shooter, identified in local media reports as a teenage boy who also attended the public high school in the Sapopemba neighbourhood on the east side of Brazil’s biggest city.

Two other girls were wounded in the shooting, and a boy was injured while fleeing, Sao Paulo state Governor Tarcisio de Freitas told a news conference, saying he was “appalled” at the attack.

The wounded victims were taken to the hospital and are now “out of danger”, he said.

Brazil has seen an increase in school attacks recently.

Earlier in October, a former student stabbed four teenagers, killing one, as they left school in the south-eastern city of Pocos de Caldas.

In April, President Luiz Inacio Lula da Silva’s administration announced a series of measures to increase security at schools and tackle social media content seen as promoting school violence.

The veteran leftist, a critic of far-right predecessor Jair Bolsonaro’s rollbacks of gun control laws, condemned the latest shooting on X, formerly Twitter.

“We cannot let ourselves think it is normal for children to have access to guns and for tragedies like this to keep happening,” President Lula wrote.

Brazilian media said the shooter used a gun that belonged to his father. AFP