Teenage boy stabbed at Birmingham school

LONDON, May 26 (Reuters) A teenager was stabbed at a Birmingham school today, just two days after a knife amnesty began in a bid to take thousands of weapons off the streets.

The incident happened around lunchtime at Heartlands High School in the Nechells area of Britain's second largest city, West Midlands police said.

''The teenage lad has been taken to hospital, but we have no details of his condition,'' a spokeswoman added.

The latest stabbing comes just a few days after the murder of 15-year-old student Kiyan Prince, who was stabbed to death trying to stop a fight outside his school gates in London.

That murder followed the killing of part-time policewoman Nisha Patel-Nasri, who was knifed to death outside her London home earlier this month.

The government knife amnesty was in response to growing public concern about knife crimes.

Statistics show that 6 per cent of all violent crimes nationally are knife-related and out of 820 homicides in 2004/5, 236 involved sharp instruments. In London alone, there were 12,589 knife-related incidents last year.

Young people aged 15-18 made up the bulk of the offenders and victims in the capital.

The issue of knife crime rose to prominence in 1995 when headteacher Philip Lawrence was stabbed to death outside his school in west London as he tried to defend one of his pupils.

His death shocked the public and politicians, leading to a raft of new measures and police powers. It also resulted in the last knife amnesty to be held in Britain, when almost 40,000 weapons were handed in.

REUTERS SHR BST2111