����ý

Four children aged 12 to 14 have been arrested by police in northern Germany after threats were made against teachers in two schools in Hamburg.

Police were called to a school in the Blankenese area of western Hamburg on Wednesday following reports of a female teacher being threatened with a gun in front of students.

Roads were blocked and armed officers went into the school.

No-one was hurt in the school, which has about 1,100 pupils.

A police spokesman said that officers had responded to reports that two boys had entered a classroom with a firearm shortly before 11:00 (10:00 GMT). The pair were then said to have left the classroom and fled.

However, the headteacher told pupils and teachers to lock themselves into their classrooms. "I was in a meeting and got a call from daughter who was crying," one father told public broadcaster NDR.

Then at around 15:00, after searching the school, armed police escorted some of the students to a nearby barracks to be collected by their parents.

It was not until Wednesday evening that a second school had been involved, in the Bahrenfeld district a few kilometres further into the city. Again nobody was hurt in the incident that unfolded shortly before 15:00.

Police said that as part of the search at the second school, plain-clothes officers then detained two boys aged 12, and another two aged 13 and 14 and seized what appeared to be two toy guns.

They said one of the 12-year-olds and the 13-year-old were being linked to the morning incident in Blankenese.