A pupil wielding a replica samurai sword wounded two members of staff in an attack at a Greek high school, a police source said.

The attacker, an 18-year-old of Polish origin, was arrested after the incident at a school in the affluent Maroussi district of Athens.

Police said the sword used in the assault had an 80-centimetre (32-inch) blade.

It was not immediately clear what sparked the incident but police said the attacker had "lost his senses."

The victims, a security guard and the school's deputy director, were taken to hospital with cuts but are not in immediate danger, the semi-state Athens News Agency said.

Though Greek schools are frequently occupied by pupils and vandalised during protests, attacks of this sort are rare in the country.

In 2009, a 19-year-old student shot and injured three people in a vocational institute in the working class Athens district of Rentis before committing suicide.

The gunman, a naturalised Greek from the disputed Black Sea region of Abkhazia, left a note saying he had long been subjected to scorn from classmates.