PARIS — French police arrested a person who focused passersby in Paris on Saturday evening, killing a German vacationer with a knife and injuring two others, France’s inside minister mentioned.
Police subdued the person, a 25-year-old French citizen who had spent 4 years in jail for planning a violent offense. After his arrest, he expressed anguish about Muslims dying, notably in Afghanistan and the Palestinian territories, and claimed that France was an confederate, French Inside Minister Gerald Darmanin mentioned. The attacker apparently cried “Allahu Akbar” (God is nice), Darmanin added.
“This particular person was able to kill others,” Darmanin informed reporters.
The anti-terrorism prosecutor’s workplace confirmed it has opened an investigation.
The attacker went after a German couple with a knife, killing the person and used a hammer to injure two others.
The attacker, who was not recognized by title, left jail after 4 years in 2020 and was below surveillance and present process psychiatric therapy, the minister mentioned, portray a short portrait of the assailant, who was born in Neuilly-Sur-Seine, a Paris suburb. He was most lately dwelling together with his dad and mom within the Essonne area, south of Paris.
The deadly assault occurred within the fifteenth district of the French capital with the assailant utilizing a knife to kill the German vacationer, who was not recognized. He then crossed the Seine river to the Proper Financial institution and used a hammer to assault the injured. Particulars in regards to the victims weren’t instantly recognized.
The attacker was stopped by police who twice fired a taser at him within the abdomen, the minister mentioned, praising the officers for his or her fast response and reiterating that “there would likely have been different useless.”
France has been below a heightened terror alert for the reason that deadly stabbing in October of a trainer within the northern metropolis of Arras by a former scholar initially from the Ingushetia area in Russia’s Caucasus Mountains and suspected of Islamic radicalization. That deadly assault got here three years after one other trainer was killed outdoors Paris, beheaded by a radicalized Chechen later killed by police.
The Saturday assault raised the worry stage within the French capital, nonetheless marked by the 2015 assaults of cafes and a music corridor by Islamist radicals that killed 130 folks.
“We are going to cede nothing within the face of terrorism. By no means,” Prime Minister Elisabeth Borne mentioned on X, previously Twitter, sending her condolences to the victims and their households.