The attack occurred Saturday night near the Eiffel Tower. The country is currently at the highest level of preparedness for attacks, as tensions rise against the backdrop of the war between Israel and Hamas, CBS News reports.
The attacker was known to authorities as a radical Islamist and was being treated for a mental illness, Interior Minister Gerald Darmanin said at the scene along the Seine. He added that the man had shouted “Allahu Akbar” (“God is the greatest”) before being arrested.
Authorities say he stabbed a German tourist to death and then used a hammer to attack others as he fled the scene.
“The man attacked a couple of foreign tourists. A German tourist born in the Philippines was stabbed to death,” Darmanin said.
According to the Paris prosecutor’s office, the attacker, born in 1997, is French and was arrested as part of an investigation into murder and attempted murder. The case was investigated by the French anti-terrorism prosecutor’s office.
According to Darmanin, the man had already been sentenced to four years in prison in 2016 for planning the attack, which he was unable to carry out. He added that the suspect told police that he could not stand the killing of Muslims “in Afghanistan and Palestine”.
“We will not give in to terrorism,” Prime Minister Elisabeth Borne wrote on social media after the attack.
French President Emmanuel Macron has expressed his condolences to the family of a German killed in a “terrorist attack”. He also thanked security forces for the quick arrest of the suspect and said justice should be served “for the good of the French.”
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2023-12-03 07:50:22
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