Three bullies kill 17-year-old classmate in Egypt's Nile Delta: reports

CAIRO: A bullying incident that turned into a murder case shocked Egyptians this week, involving three secondary school students who allegedly killed their 17-year-old classmate in the Nile Delta city of Kafr El-Sheikh, according to local reports.

The boy was attacked by the three students after leaving a private tutoring centre, the reports quoted witnesses as saying.

The boy tried to run away, but the assailants struck his leg and slashed his neck with a broken glass bottle, leaving a 25-centimetre-long wound. He died upon arrival at a nearby hospital.

The police arrested one suspect at the scene, but the two others managed to escape.

Harrowing footage showing the victim lying wounded on the street surrounded by pedestrians as they waited for an ambulance has gone viral on social media.

Preliminary police investigations indicated that the three suspects had systematically bullied the boy.

Bullying has proven such an issue in Egyptian society in recent years that a law was enacted in 2020 to criminalise it.

Counseling psychologist Reda El-Gaafary told The New Arab that bullying is a symptom of domestic and societal problems.

“A bully has been bullied and persecuted himself or herself by others, whether at home by a family member or by another person of authority, which, eventually, turned him or her into a bully and an oppressor,” she said.

“In the absence of a healthy, enabling environment that modifies such discourteous behaviour, whether at home or at school, it magnifies, turning violent. Add to that the works of art, whether in the cinema or on TV that depict crime and thuggery as if they were normal acts,” she explained.

The Kafr El-Sheikh incident was not the first of its kind in Egypt this year.

Earlier last month, an 11-year-old school pupil beaten by his classmates died at a Cairo hospital. The children had fought over who would sit at the front desk on the first day of school.