Active assailants have staged several attacks targeting schools in the first half of 2026, demonstrating the sustained threat facing educational institutions, Neo Tsotetsi discusses.
Globally, education institutions remain one of the most frequently targeted settings for active assailant attacks, with school shootings and stabbings reported in the US, Canada, the UK, and Turkey in the first half of 2026. School attacks continue to be concentrated in North America – where at least four attacks resulted in eight fatalities and 32 injuries between February and April 2026 – but recent incidents in Turkey and Kenya underscore the broader and persistent threat to educational facilities worldwide.
Motives vary significantly on a case-by-case basis; however, a recurring feature of school-based incidents globally has been the attacker’s connection to the institution, with many perpetrators being current or former students acting on personal grievances. Methods also vary widely, with assailants using both traditional weapons like firearms, as well as improvised weapons such as knives, arson and rudimentary explosives. This poses persistent challenges for law enforcement and educational professionals in strengthening prevention, early intervention and mitigation measures, particularly in jurisdictions where such attacks are uncommon and capability gaps are more pronounced. The case studies below highlight the ongoing threat of active assailant attacks globally.
In a single 28-hour window between 14 and 15 April, two assailants carried out separate school shootings in the Şanlıurfa and Kahramanmaraş provinces, with the latter marking Turkey’s first deadly mass shooting at a school. Despite the rarity of school shootings in the country, these incidents have drawn renewed attention towards the broader issue of rising youth violence in Turkey. Youth participation in violent crime – both in and outside of Turkish schools – has long trended upwards, resulting in more frequent incidences of assault affecting both students and educators. Added to this, unregistered firearms have become increasingly accessible – accounting for up to 90 percent of all guns in Turkey, despite the country’s strict gun laws – leaving schools increasingly exposed to the country’s upswing in gun violence. With authorities facing entrenched capability shortfalls in enforcing firearm regulations, the growing accessibility of guns stands to intensify the threat active assailant incidents pose to schools in Turkey, particularly due to the higher rate of casualties that can accompany shooting attacks.
On 29 May, police arrested nine high school students for the suspected arson attack at a girls’ school dormitory in Gilgil, Nakuru County, in which 16 students were killed and 79 were injured. While both the motive and intended impact (whether they set the fire intending to kill) remains unclear, the incident forms part of a broader pattern of grievance-driven student arson attacks which have challenged Kenyan boarding schools for decades, with students typically citing harsh discipline and excessive academic pressure as motivators. Student arson incidents also tend to occur in clusters, particularly during exam periods and in response to similar fires set at other schools. In the first six months of 2026, for instance, the Kenya Red Cross recorded at least 36 fires across the country before the attack in Gilgil, with at least five more being set in the following weeks. Though most incidents are non-fatal, the often-uncontrollable nature of fire as a weapon, as well as students’ propensity to set these fires inside dormitories at night when doors are locked can, on occasion, result in high numbers of casualties.