Knife culture claims new victim as boy is stabbed outside school

A 14-year-old boy was stabbed outside his school yesterday. The teenager, Mohammed Ahmed Hussain, was wounded in the stomach after being attacked while playing football opposite his school in Birmingham at lunchtime.

He was given emergency surgery in hospital but his injuries are not considered life threatening.

The attack comes eight days after Kiyan Prince, 15, was stabbed to death outside the gates of his north London school. The Government launched a knives amnesty two days ago.

The attackers involved in yesterday's assault are not thought to be pupils at the victim's school, Heartlands High School, a comprehensive for 11 to 16-year-olds in Nechells district in the centre of Birmingham.

According to witnesses Mohammed, who is known as Romeo to his friends, was playing football on a grassy area with fellow pupils when three youths approached and started shouting at them. Mohammed, who had moved to the UK from Pakistan last year, asked them what they were saying and two of them approached him before one stabbed him. The attackers, believed to be from another school, ran away as a teacher gave Mohammed first aid until paramedics arrived.

Mohammed, from Winson Green, Birmingham, was taken to City Hospital where his condition is described as stable.

Temogin Lall, 15, who is on the school council, said: "This could happen to anyone but nothing like this has ever happened before. This is just a normal school."

Heartlands High School was described in an Ofsted report in March as being in an area of "widespread social deprivation".