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Knife attacker wounds three at major Paris train station

Three people were injured Saturday in a knife attack at Paris's Gare de Lyon railway station, a major travel hub, police said, adding that a suspect with psychiatric problems had been arrested.

Published: 3 February 2024 09:16 CET
Updated: 4 February 2024 07:51 CET
Knife attacker wounds three at major Paris train station
French forensic and judicial police work after a knife attack at Paris's Gare de Lyon railway station. Photo: Thomas SAMSON/AFP.

Prosecutors later said they had ended their questioning of the suspect, a Malian national, due to his “incompatible” mental state and placed him in police custody for psychiatric care.

The man went on a stabbing spree at 7:35 am (06:35 GMT) at the station, which operates domestic trains as well as those heading to Switzerland and Italy.

One person suffered life-threatening injuries to the abdomen while two others were lightly wounded, Paris police prefect Laurent Nunez told reporters. A fourth person went into shock after witnessing the assaults.

The stabbing took place less than six months before Paris hosts the 2024 Olympics and an expected 15 million visitors.

Paris prosecutors said the suspect might have used a knife and a hammer that were under analysis.

“The suspect did not cry out (any religious slogans) during his attack,” a police source said. “He presented the police an Italian driving licence”, which gave his date of birth as January 1, 1992.

His Italian papers were in order, showing he had lived legally in the country since 2016 and had no criminal record. The suspect volunteered to police that he suffered from “psychiatric problems” and he was carrying medicine, said Nunez.

“We will see if terrorism can be ruled out, after checks underway on his telephone records, life in Italy and comments to investigators,” Nunez added.

Passers-by overpowered the man before railway police arrived on the scene, the police source said.

“A thank you to those who overpowered the man who carried out this unbearable act,” said Interior Minister Gerald Darmanin on X, formerly Twitter.

The attackers’ motives remained unclear.

The Paris prosecutor’s office launched an inquiry into the attack, while the national anti-terrorist prosecutor said it was observing proceedings at this stage.

The assault took place less than six months before Paris hosts the 2024 Olympics and and an expected 15 million visitors.

Each year more than 100 million passengers go through the Gare de Lyon, France’s biggest mainline hub.

The area between halls one and three were temporarily inaccessible, rail operator SNCF said on X, formerly Twitter. Services to the Paris region were delayed, the SNCF said, referring only to “an act of criminal intent.”

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CRIME

Suspects in Paris Holocaust memorial defacement fled abroad: prosecutors

French police have tracked three suspects in last week's defacement of the Paris Holocaust memorial across the border into Belgium, prosecutors said.

Published: 22 May 2024 16:32 CEST
Suspects in Paris Holocaust memorial defacement fled abroad: prosecutors

The suspects were caught on security footage as they moved through Paris before “departing for Belgium from the Bercy bus station” in southeast Paris, prosecutors said.

Investigators added that the suspects’ “reservations had been made from Bulgaria”.

An investigation was launched after the memorial was vandalised with anti-Semitic image on the anniversary of the first major round-up of French Jews under the Nazis in 1941.

On May 14, red hands were found daubed on the Wall of the Righteous at the Paris Holocaust memorial, which lists 3,900 people honoured for saving Jews during the Nazi occupation of France in World War Two.

Prosecutors are investigating damage to a protected historical building for national, ethnic, racial or religious motives.

Similar tags were found elsewhere in the Marais district of central Paris, historically a centre of French Jewish life.

The hands echoed imagery used earlier this month by students demonstrating for a ceasefire in Israel’s campaign against the Palestinian militant group Hamas in Gaza.

Their discovery prompted a new wave of outrage over anti-Semitism.

“The Wall of the Righteous at the Shoah (Holocaust) Memorial was vandalised overnight,” Paris mayor Anne Hidalgo said in a statement, calling it an “unspeakable act”.

It was “despicable” to target the Holocaust Memorial, Yonathan Arfi, president of the Representative Council of Jewish Institutions in France (CRIF) wrote on X, formerly Twitter, calling the act a, “hateful rallying cry against Jews”.

French President Emmanuel Macron condemned the act as one of “odious anti-Semitism”.

The vandalism “damages the memory” both of those who saved Jews in the Holocaust and the victims, he wrote on X.

“The (French) Republic, as always, will remain steadfast in the face of odious anti-Semitism,” he added.

Around 10 other spots, including schools and nurseries, around the historic Marais district home to many Jews were similarly tagged, central Paris district mayor Ariel Weil told AFP.

France has the largest Jewish population of any country outside Israel and the United States, as well as Europe’s largest Muslim community.

The country has been on high alert for anti-Semitic acts since Hamas’s October 7 attack on southern Israel and the state’s campaign of reprisals in Gaza in the months since.

In February, a French source told AFP that Paris’s internal security service believed Russia’s FSB security service was behind an October graffiti campaign tagging stars of David on Paris buildings.

A Moldovan couple was arrested in the case.

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