A 24-year-old student has been charged with stabbing three people during a gender studies class at the University of Waterloo in Canada this week in what police are calling a "hate-motivated incident."

The suspect, Geovanny Villalba-Aleman, is an international student who had been studying at the university, according to a news release from the Waterloo Regional Police Service.

Police say he walked into a university lecture classroom on Wednesday and stabbed a 38-year-old professor, a 20-year-old female student and a 19-year-old male student with a knife. Roughly 40 students were inside the classroom at the time of the attack, police said.

Villalba-Aleman is accused of targeting the gender studies class, and "investigators believe this was a hate-motivated incident related to gender expression and gender identity," police said in the release. He has been charged with three counts of aggravated assault; four counts of assault with a weapon; two counts of possessing a weapon for a dangerous purpose; and mischief under $5,000.

The victims' injuries are serious but not life-threatening, and all were being treated at hospitals, police spokesperson Cherri Greeno told CNN Wednesday.

Villalba-Aleman was found inside the same building as the classroom and quickly taken into custody, according to Greeno. He appeared in court on Thursday for a bail hearing.

The stabbings, which took place at the university's Hagey Hall, prompted the university to issue orders to vacate the building and shelter in place order as police responded to the scene.

"Any classes scheduled in Hagey Hall this evening are cancelled. All other campus operations will proceed as usual," the University of Waterloo tweeted Wednesday.

Waterloo is about 70 miles west of Toronto.