The Guardian

Knife attacker in French park targets children

Angelique Chrisafis Paris Alexandra Topping

Four children and two adults have been injured in a knife attack in the town of Annecy in the French Alps. The children – one aged 22 months, two aged two years old and one aged three – were in a critical condition from stab wounds, and were transferred to hospitals in the French Alps and across the Swiss border in Geneva yesterday afternoon.

One of the critically injured young children was British, the foreign secretary, James Cleverly, confirmed.

Dozens of very young children were receiving support for the trauma of witnessing the stabbings at a lakeside playground. High school children who witnessed the attack were being treated for shock.

French authorities said the British child was a tourist. Another of the children was Dutch. A 70-year-old man was also

seriously injured – first stabbed by the knife-attacker and then injured by police fire. A second adult was treated for injuries.

At about 9.45am, a man with a knife entered the playground near Annecy’s lake, prized for its quiet calm and breathtaking views. He walked past adults and targeted very young children with a knife – including one in a pushchair, according to witnesses. Within minutes, he was pursued by police. He attacked an elderly man in a different part of the park. Police fired shots and detained the attacker, who was unharmed.

The local prosecutor said an investigation was under way for attempted murder, instituted by national police, rather than anti-terrorist investigators. The prosecutor said initial inquiries showed “there is no apparent terrorist motive”.

The French prime minister, Élisabeth Borne, said the suspect was a Syrian with refugee status in Sweden. Police described him as in his early 30s. Borne said he was homeless and an “isolated individual”. He had asked for asylum in France, which had not been processed because of his Swedish status. He had been free to travel legally to France.

Police sources told Le Monde that the man had declared himself to be a Syrian Christian in his French asylum application. Le Monde and other French media reported that he had been wearing a Christian cross on a chain round his neck when arrested.

Borne said French authorities had contacted international security and intelligence agencies and the man was unknown to any French, European or other foreign security service. He had no criminal record, and no apparent psychiatric record.

She called the attack “savage” and said France had been “shaken by this hateful, indescribable act”.

The French president, Emmanuel Macron, tweeted that it was an act of “absolute cowardice” and that the nation was in shock.

Cleverly, who was speaking at an OECD ministerial council press conference in France, called the attacks a “terrible act of violence” and said the British government was ready to support the French authorities in whatever way they could.

The former Liverpool footballer Anthony Le Tallec, who has played for FC Annecy, was running near the lake at the time of the attack. He described seeing dozens of people running towards him, a mother shouting: “Run, someone is stabbing everyone, he’s stabbing children!”

Le Tallec, 38, said on Instagram and in later French media interviews that he was surprised but kept running, then saw the attacker with police chasing him. He saw the attacker rush towards a group of elderly people where he stabbed a man twice. Le Tallec said he had shouted at the police to shoot the attacker.

Another witness, Malo, told BFM TV that the man was “shouting, but it wasn’t really comprehensible”. Another witness told local radio that the attacker had seemed “confused”. A witness called Nelly told France Info radio: “People were running, crying, panicking … it was horrible.” The prime minister travelled to

the scene with the interior minister, Gérald Darmanin. MPs in the national parliament held a minute’s silence.

Some politicians on the right and far right called for more scrutiny of France’s immigration and asylum policy, seizing on the suspected attacker’s identity as a refugee.

“It seems like the culprit has the same profile that you see often in these attacks,” the head of the rightwing Républicains party, Éric Ciotti, told reporters in parliament. “We need to draw conclusions without being naive, with strength and with a clear mind.”

Jordan Bardella, head of Marine Le Pen’s far-right National Rally party tweeted that French immigration policy and European rules should be reviewed.

‘France is shaken by this hateful, indescribable act’ Élisabeth Borne

French prime minister

Front Page

en-gb

2023-06-09T07:00:00.0000000Z

2023-06-09T07:00:00.0000000Z

https://guardian.pressreader.com/article/281608129832958

Guardian/Observer