Read news from:
Austria
SHARE
COPY LINK

CRIME

Police ‘arrest two’ over Paris Kurdish murders

French police have detained two people for questioning in connection with the killings of three female Kurdish activists in Paris last week, a judicial source said on Friday.

Published: 18 January 2013 19:22 CET

The two were arrested during the day on Thursday, the source said, the same day thousands of Kurds gathered in Turkey's southeastern city of Diyarbakir
for the funerals of the three activists.

The source provided no details on the reasons the two people were detained or what role, if any, they are suspected of having played in the killings.

The three women, one of them 55-year-old Sakine Cansiz, a co-founder of the outlawed Kurdistan Workers' Party (PKK), were found shot execution-style at a Kurdish centre in Paris on January 10.

The Paris killings came amid nascent peace talks between Turkish secret services and jailed PKK leader Abdullah Ocalan with the aim of disarming the group, branded as a terrorist organisation by Turkey and much of the international community.

The PKK took up arms for self-rule in the Kurdish-majority southeast in a conflict that has claimed 45,000 lives, mostly Kurds.

Turkish Prime Minister Recep Tayyip Erdogan has speculated the killings could be the result of an "internal feud" within the PKK aimed at sabotaging the talks, recalling that the separatist group has carried out similar
executions in the past.

Member comments

Log in here to leave a comment.
Become a Member to leave a comment.

CRIME

Two girls wounded in knife attack outside French school

An assailant on Thursday wounded two girls aged 6 and 11 in a knife attack close to their school in the east of France and was later arrested, officials said.

Published: 18 April 2024 16:33 CEST
Two girls wounded in knife attack outside French school

The 11-year-old was stabbed outside the school in the town of Souffelweyersheim, on the outskirts of Strasbourg, while the six-year-old was attacked by the same man nearby.

Both received superficial wounds, police said, adding the attacker did not appear to have any known links to radicals and was not previously known to the security services.

Both received superficial wounds, police said, adding the attacker did not appear to have any known links to radicals and was not previously known to the security services.

Both girls are being treated in a paediatric hospital. Parents were later in the afternoon allowed to pick up their children, who had been confined to the school in the immediate aftermath of the attack.

The attacker, born in 1995, was arrested in the area where he attacked the second girl, the police said. He no longer had the knife in his hand and did not resist arrest, it added.

The attack came as Prime Minister Gabriel Attal announced a series of measures aimed at cracking down on violence committed by schoolchildren against their peers. There was no indication so far that the attacker had a link with the school.

“I’m really scared. We’ve been reassured that the children are safe inside, but we don’t know when we’ll be able to get them back,” Sarah, a mother of an eight-year-old pupil, told AFP before the green light was given to collect the children.

“A friend called me. She saw the commotion in front of the school as she passed by. Her reflex was to call me so that I could pick up my son.”

SHOW COMMENTS