A French middle-school student who stabbed his music teacher in the face on Wednesday in northeastern France had a fascination with weapons and Nazi ideology, authorities said.

The teacher survived the stabbing and her life is not in danger, but the 14-year-old student is between life and death after he stabbed himself in the neck as police arrested him while he fled the school on a bicycle.

Strasbourg prosecutor Clarisse Taron told reporters that the student had had a difficult childhood, having been placed in a host family where he had suffered violence, after which he had been placed in an institution.

"It had been noticed that he had an interest in weapons and in anything related to World War II, notably to Nazism," Taron said.

She added that he had already been sanctioned at the institution and was being monitored by psychologists after he had made Nazi-themed drawings, including of a soldier raising his right hand in a Nazi salute.

Taron said the student had stabbed his teacher with a large kitchen knife in a hallway of the school in the town of Benfeld and that he had not tried to attack other teachers or students before fleeing the scene.

French education minister Elisabeth Borne said the student had no track record of violence. He had already been temporarily expelled from the school and a new disciplinary procedure was opened after he drew SS symbols on a notebook, Borne said.

Security in France's schools has been the subject of intense debate in recent years. In June, then-Prime Minister Francois Bayrou said the government would test adding security gates at schools after a school aide was stabbed during a bag search.

In 2020, the murder of teacher Samuel Paty after he showed pupils caricatures of the Prophet Mohammad in a class on free speech sparked a political Uproar. (France 24 with Reuters)