Two South Texas teenagers planned to set off explosives and gun down "as many students as possible" in a Columbine-inspired massacre at a middle school, authorities say.

Police in Uvalde, about 80 miles west of San Antonio, say they learned of the plot April 19 and arrested the 14- and 13-year-old boys on April 25. The juveniles' names have not been released because of their ages.

The pair had originally planned for the massacre to take place at Uvalde High School on the anniversary of the Columbine High School attack in 2022, which would be their senior year, police said.

But one of them persuaded the other to move up their plans to this year at Morales Junior High School, where the 14-year-old was a student and the 13-year-old previously attended, the Uvalde Leader-News reported.

Police said the duo were obsessed with the Columbine massacre — researching the attackers' tactics and referring to themselves as Eric Harris and Dylan Klebold.

"One of the students had numerous writings and drawings which depicted weapons capable of causing mass destruction," police said in a news release. "He wrote about being 'God-like' and killing police and other persons. He had an academic analysis of one of the Columbine shooter's journal."

Authorities said they found conversations detailing the plot on school-issued iPads.

"It appears the two were planning on detonating the IEDs at the start of the mass casualty event," police said in the release. "After the IEDs, they would begin killing students from a list they developed where they had ranked student victims by priority. After that, they were going to kill as many students as possible before taking their own lives."

The pair planned to steal firearms from a neighbor, the Leader-News reported, but it was unclear whether they had actually acquired any weapons.

The teens, who face charges of conspiracy to commit murder, are being held in juvenile detention in Val Verde County.

Uvalde Consolidated ISD has not commented on the arrests.

This week, a high school student in Plano was arrested after authorities say he was planning an Islamic State-inspired attack at Frisco's Stonebriar Centre mall. Matin Azizi-Yarand, 17, faces charges of making a terroristic threat and criminal solicitation of capital murder of a peace officer.