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CRIME

China to send police ‘to help patrol Paris streets’

Police in Paris will draft in reinforcements from Beijing to help protect Chinese visitors to the city this summer, according to reports this week. Chinese tourists have been the target of some recent high profile muggings and attacks.

Published: 7 May 2014 08:49 CEST
China to send police 'to help patrol Paris streets'
Will chinese police be patrolling Paris to help protect its nationals who are visiting Paris and often the target of petty crime? Photo: Patrick Kovarick/AFP

Chinese police will help patrol tourist destinations in Paris this summer after a rise in muggings and attacks on Chinese tourists, a source in France's interior ministry told AFP this week.

The ministry source said the Chinese police would help their French counterparts in Paris tourist spots but declined to give numbers.

More than one million Chinese visitors come to France every year and there have been concerns over a number of muggings and attacks against them.

In March last year, a group of 23 Chinese visitors were robbed in a restaurant shortly after they landed at Paris's Charles De Gaulle airport.

The tourists were on a 12-day trip across Europe but it all went awry when they stopped for dinner at Le Bourget, to the north of Paris in the Seine-Saint-Denis area. On leaving the restaurant they were attacked by three men.

That attack prompted the then Minister for Tourism Sylvia Pinel to pledge to do whatever was needed to protect Chinese visitors. 

Pinel said "everything will be done to find the perpetrators" and underscored "the determination of the French government to ensure the security of tourists in France."

The number of Chinese visitors to France is expected to be given a boost this year because of events linked to the 50th anniversary of the establishment of diplomatic ties between Paris and Beijing.

France continues to make efforts to woo Chinese tourists, whose spending power, means they are a huge boost to the tourism industry.

In January the Foreign Minister Laurent Fabius announced that Chinese visitors would get fast-track visas in order to make it easier for them to come to France.

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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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