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A 13-year-old French boy who allegedly set out to mow down his teachers with a shotgun was Thursday charged with attempted murder and released on bail, officials said.
The boy was ordered not to return to the town of Beauvais, just north of Paris, where on Monday he had headed with a loaded shotgun to the prestigious Catholic school where he was a pupil.
He was also ordered not to try to contact his teachers and was placed in a foster family while awaiting psychological evaluation, said a statement from the prosecutor's office in the nearby town of Senlis.
Officials said that on Tuesday the teenager set out to kill his teachers -- whom he said were being too tough on him -- but abandoned the plan when he arrived at the school and found it surrounded by police.
The boy's parents had alerted police after they realised their son had taken the family gun from their house near Beauvais.
The boy, said to be a video game enthusiast, had left a message on his blog stating that "this is the last day of my life."
"He left his home with a loaded hunting gun and 25 cartridges," said senior local official Raymond Yeddou. "He went in the direction of the school where, according to his statements, he intended to kill his teachers."
But when he saw a major police presence in front of and inside the school he abandoned his plan, dumped the gun in a field and headed to an internet cafe in Beauvais town centre where his parents later found him.
