An ongoing feud between two Corporate Area high schools has left at least two students injured after several violent clashes within the past two weeks.

Information reaching THE WEEKEND STAR is that the latest incident occurred on Wednesday, leaving two students nursing injuries from two separate but connected incidents.

"It happens basically in the mornings ... most of them would meet downtown Kingston or Cross Roads in the mornings," a representative from one of the schools explained.

A group of students also had to flee to avoid being attacked by students from the rival school.

stones hurled

THE WEEKEND STAR understands that a female student was wounded on her elbow after she was hit by stones hurled by boys from the rival school while a recent graduate of her school was also assaulted. "A girl complained that she was hit by stones thrown by a group of boys," the representative said. "There was an incident whereby a boy was injured by a group of boys ... it was reported that the instrument used to inflict injuries was a sharpened T-square."

The principals of both schools are in dialogue to resolve the violence. "As far as we know, it is a particular set of students between both schools who seem to have infuriated some conflict between themselves," one of the principals commented.

The acting principal of the other school emphasised, "Until now, it is not clear what the war is about ... it is not clear how this thing started."

barely escaped

A frustrated mother of one of the students who barely escaped injury from an attack said "nobody is taking the blame".

Director of communications at the Ministry of Education, Colin Blair, confirmed, "We are aware of a long-standing feud between both schools." Blair said the ministry has a zero-toleranceapproach to violence in schools saying, "Whatever is criminal in society is criminal in schools and therefore there are no exceptions."

He said the ministry has requested formal reports from both schools. These should be submitted to the ministry's Region One officer today.

Superintendent Steve McGregor, head of the Kingston Central Division, confirmed that he was aware of the matter. "We are working on it, our school resource officers are working on it. We are aware of it and we are in fact doing things to curtail it," he explained.