A man was detained by police after assaulting four students today in a university classroom with what one witness described as a bat, university officials and police said.
A student entered a classroom at the Australian National University around 9:15 this morning and assaulted four other students, the university said in a statement.
Police were called to the school and took a man into custody, the Australian Capital Territory police said.
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Police and university officials declined to release any other details, including whether weapons were involved or whether any of the students were injured. But Max Claessens, an 18-year-old student whose friend was inside the classroom, said his friend told him that the attacker pulled a cricket or baseball bat out of a bag and began hitting other students.
The attacker had been a student of the statistics class for four weeks and hadn't drawn any suspicions, Claessens said.
"It was just out of the blue. Nothing seemed strange about him," Claessens said. "I'm a bit surprised, to be honest. I didn't expect something like this to happen. You can't exactly anticipate someone picking up a cricket bat in a statistics class."
Video footage from the scene showed paramedics taking one woman away from a university building on a stretcher, and another shaken-looking woman being helped out of the building on foot.
The university said there is no indication of what motivated the attack.
"There is no ongoing threat to public safety," police said in a statement.
The university, which is located in Australia's capital, Canberra, said counselling services were being provided to anyone affected by the attack.
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