LOS ANGELES (Reuters) - Two 15-year-old students were wounded, one of them critically, by the same bullet at a Los Angeles area high school on Tuesday when a loaded gun went off in a classmate’s backpack, authorities said.

A female who was struck in the head by a round from the gun was rushed to nearby Harbor UCLA Medical Center, where she underwent emergency surgery and was listed in critical condition.

The second student, a boy, was struck in the neck by the same bullet and taken to Harbor UCLA in serious but stable condition.

The student who owned the backpack fled after the gun discharged and was taken into custody in another classroom by officers responding to the scene, Los Angeles Unified School District Police Chief Steve Zipperman told reporters.

“It appears that as they were returning from nutrition (break), he walked into the classroom and placed his backpack on the desk and when he did that a gun fired from within the backpack,” LAUSD spokeswoman Lydia Ramos said.

“It seems to be accidental,” she added.

The gun was recovered on the campus of Gardena High School, which was locked down for several hours following the 10:40 a.m. incident, before students were released to their parents.

Authorities did not identify either of the victims, other than to say they attended 10th grade at the school.

They also did not identify the suspect. It was not immediately clear what charges the boy would face. His age was given alternately as 16 or 17 by authorities.

Gardena, a small town of about 60,000 people, lies just south of downtown Los Angeles.

The shooting comes 10 days after a college dropout in Arizona opened fire with a semi-automatic pistol outside a Tucson shopping center, killing six people and wounding 13 others, including a congresswoman.

A high school in the San Diego suburb of La Mesa, California, was put on a security alert for four hours last Friday after police received a phone call from an anonymous caller asking about a supposed shooting threat.