‘Attack against our soul’

Incomprehension in a quiet corner of the Alps

It was a sunny mid-morning at the edge of one of France’s most beautiful lakes, framed by mountains and park lawns in the picturesque French Alps city of Annecy. The quiet, waterside playground, with a slide and climbing frame, was a favourite for local toddlers with parents and childminders as well as tourists. High-school children were also milling around in the morning shade. Annecy had been in the news recently only for concerns over too much Airbnb accommodation in tourist towns – and for its famous animated film festival which was due to start on Sunday.

But at 9.45am local time there were sounds of women in the park screaming, grabbing children and running, calling for police. Witnesses said an “indescribable” horror unfolded as toddlers and babies were stabbed and bleeding.

As children played, a man with a knife with a 10-centimetre blade had jumped the fence and headed first towards a woman with a pushchair who screamed for help, then headed for other toddlers playing.

A local ice-cream seller and other locals recognised the man – dressed in black and wearing sunglasses and a bandana – who they said had been sitting near the park in previous months. They said he had not seemed dangerous in previous weeks.

This time he deliberately ignored adults to specifically stab toddlers. In a video taken by a bystander and viewed by Agence France-Presse, the man could be heard shouting “in the name of Jesus Christ”. The local prosecutor said there was “no apparent terrorist motive” for the attack at this stage. The man was not drunk, or under the influence of drugs, the prosecutor said.

Annecy was plunged into a state of shock and confusion.

One young woman who had been playing boules near the playground told local France Bleu Pays de Savoie radio: “I didn’t understand, I thought it was a game,” she said. “He jumped the barrier, stabbed a little girl, then a baby in a pushchair. I thought it was a toy. I thought it was a joke, but no, he had a real knife. When I heard a mum screaming, I turned and ran.”

Other people nearby were scared and confused. A woman, Christina, who worked in the area near the park said she saw a child heavily bleeding. She thought there had been a bike accident. “But there was a group of young people who seemed in a state of shock and were telling police cars where to go when they arrived,” she said.

An older retired man who had been cycling on a lakeside cycle path told LCI TV: “I saw a little child, I saw blood across their stomach, I thought that isn’t an accident caused by a swing … Then I saw people running, screaming.”

A refuse collector said he and colleagues were on their morning round emptying bins “when we saw people running, carrying their children”. They tried to step in to stop the attacker, but he ran out on to the lawns near the lake and at that moment police officers arrived and gave chase. Meanwhile, a passerby carrying a rucksack had attempted to pursue the attacker across the park trying to throw or swing his heavy bag at him.

The former Liverpool footballer, Anthony Le Tallec, who was out on a lakeside run, described how police chased the attacker on foot. But the attacker then lunged at a 70-year-old man, stabbing and wounding him, before police fired shots and arrested him. There were fears that the attacker’s status as a refugee in Sweden, free to travel in the EU, could spark extremeright street demonstrations over immigration policy in France. Annecy’s Green party mayor and local politicians called for calm.

France was in shock. The horror and incomprehension brought back grim memories of another major attack on children in 2012 when the radicalised, unemployed panel-beater Mohamed Merah killed seven people, including three children and a rabbi at a Jewish school in the southern city of Toulouse.

There was incomprehension in this quiet corner of Alps that very young children could be targeted in this way. Antoine Armand, a member of parliament for HauteSavoie described it as “an attack against our soul”.