A man armed with a knife sowed terror in a park on the shores of Lake Annecy on Thursday morning. He injured five people, including four very young children, before being arrested by the police.
According to the identity declared by the attacker, he was born in 1991, he is a Syrian national, asylum seeker and unknown to all files, we learned from a police source. The terrorist nature of the attack or not is being assessed according to a source familiar with the matter.
Three of the victims, two children and an adult, are in critical condition, a source familiar with the matter added. The man, armed with a knife, attacked the children, aged around three, on a playground in a large park by Lake Annecy.
“It happened at 9:45 this morning, with knives,” near the Jardin de l’Europe, a very busy park on the shores of Lake Annecy, the prefecture said, pre-announcing the provisional number of eight injured.
A crisis unit has been set up in the Haute-Savoie prefecture, which has also set up an information system for the public.
According to the Dauphiné Liberated newspaper, the victims were transferred to the Annecy Genevois Hospital Center and the witnesses were taken to a building near the scene of the tragedy, whose surroundings were cordoned off by a large police force.
“The Great Attack”
According to witnesses interviewed on BFM television, after the attack, the man tried to flee the playground and attacked an elderly man, who was quickly arrested by the police.
Immediately, Interior Minister Gerald Dorman posted a tweet: “Many people, including children, were injured by a man armed with a knife in a square in Annecy. The man was arrested due to the speed of the intervention of the order forces”.
In Paris, representatives of the government and members of the National Assembly observed a minute of silence.
Assembly President Yaël Braun-Pivet called for a moment of silence “for them, for their families” after the “severe attack”.
Elizabeth Bourne and Gerald Dormanin are expected at the site on Thursday, their entourages told AFP.
“Terrible attack this morning on Pâquier in Annecy. All my thoughts to the victims and families,” tweeted Mayor François Astorg, asking the public to “avoid the Pâquier sector to allow operations to run smoothly.”
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