SARREGUEMINES, France (AFP) — A nine-year-old girl was found dead in her home in northeastern France this weekend, prosecutors and police sources said, pointing to a likely death by suicide after she was bullied.

Former Prime Minister Gabriel Attal on Monday expressed his condolences to the family, after the girl’s body was found on Saturday in the town of Sarreguemines.

“Bullying is a scourge, a slow poison that erodes self-confidence and can lead to the worst,” the ex-education minister, who last year founded an association to fight harassment in school, wrote on X.

Regional education authorities said they were “shaken by this tragic event” while the public prosecutor’s office said an investigation was ongoing.

It said it seemed to have been “a voluntary act by the girl” but did not provide further details.

Police sources said the child had left a letter to her family.

Her mother said her primary school classmates had bullied her, calling her overweight, and she had previously mentioned killing herself, the source added.

White roses dotted the railings outside the school on Monday morning.

Someone close the girl’s family, who asked to remain anonymous, claimed that the school had been made aware of the bullying.

Abnor, a nine-year-old fellow pupil, said the girl had been bullied on her way home.

“In class, she laughed, she was a little cheerful, but sometimes (other children) insulted her,” he said outside the school, where he was with his mother.

“It’s not nice,” he added. “We’re in a school to learn, to get a good job, to earn money. It’s not a place for bullying — not here nor anywhere else in the world.”