One person was killed and two others wounded in a stabbing attack in downtown Paris on Saturday evening, Interior Minister Gerald Darmanin has said.
“The police have just courageously arrested an assailant attacking the passersby in Paris, around the Quai de Grenelle. One person is dead, and one injured person is being treated by the Paris fire brigade. Please avoid the area,” the minister wrote on X (formerly Twitter). He later told reporters that a third victim was also hospitalized.
Darmanin said that the assailant shouted “Allahu Akbar,” confirming previous reports by Le Parisien and AFP.
“After his arrest, he said that he could no longer tolerate seeing Muslims dying in Afghanistan and Palestine,” Darmanin told reporters after arriving at the crime scene.
The stabbing occurred on the Bir-Hakeim bridge. A tourist with German and Philippine passports died from knife wounds to the back and shoulder, the French media reported.
In addition, an English tourist was attacked while walking with his wife and child on Avenue du President Kennedy. He was reportedly hospitalized with head injuries. The third victim is said be a French national.
According to BFM TV, the suspect was born in France in 1997. He was known to authorities as a person with radical Islamist views and suffering from “significant psychiatric disorders,” the channel said. Darmanin that the suspect was sentenced to four years in prison in 2016 for plotting “a violent action.”
France has seen a wave of anti-Semitic incidents following the outbreak of fighting between Israel and Palestinian militants on October 7.
On October 13, a knife-wielding Islamist attacked a school in the northern French city of Arras, killing a teacher and injuring three people. The assailant was detained.