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CRIME

Kurds arrested in French anti-terror raids

Seventeen Kurds have been arrested in southwestern France in an anti-terror probe into extortion rackets used to raise funds for the outlawed Kurdistan Worker's Party (PKK), legal sources said Tuesday.

Published: 12 February 2013 13:50 CET

The people arrested in the cities of Bordeaux and Toulouse are suspected of being senior figures within the regional structure of the organisation, the sources said.

The arrests came as German federal prosecutors on Tuesday pressed charges against a 46-year-old Turkish man suspected of raising money for the PKK throughout Europe.

The PKK, which took up arms in its campaign for autonomy in southeast Turkey in 1984, is branded a terrorist group by Ankara and its Western allies.

More than 40,000 people, mostly Kurds, have died in the conflict.

Three Kurdish women activists were shot dead in Paris last month. The driver of one of the women has been charged with their murder.

The killings came against a background of tentative peace talks between Turkey and jailed PKK leader Abdullah Ocalan.

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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.”

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