FRANCE: On Friday, in the northern French city of Arras, a 20-year-old man fatally stabbed a teacher and seriously injured two others in an attack that President Emmanuel Macron strongly denounced as “barbaric Islamic terrorism.”
France’s Interior Minister Gerald Darmanin stated that the incident in Arras was connected to events in the Middle East, where Israel is waging a military campaign to drive out Hamas fighters following their lethal spree, and that France was now on its highest state of alert.
Just a day before, Macron had appealed to the French people to maintain their unity and avoid letting the Israel-Hamas conflict impact their domestic lives.
During his visit to the attack site, Macron honoured the deceased teacher, Dominique Bernard, whose body remained covered and surrounded by a pool of blood. “He stepped in and undoubtedly saved a lot of lives himself. Our choice is not to give in to terror, not to let anything divide us,” Macron said.
The suspect, identified by prosecutors as Mohamed M., has been taken into custody and is known to be a former student of the Lycee Gambetta high school where the attack occurred, as per a police source. Additionally, one of the attacker’s brothers was detained in close proximity to the incident. The office of the anti-terrorism prosecutor was given charge of the investigation.
Several witnesses reported hearing the assailant shouting “Allahu Akbar” during the incident, as stated by prosecutor Jean-Francois Ricard. According to a police source, the attacker was included on a state watchlist of individuals considered to be security risks. The “Fiche S” includes thousands of names, and only a tiny number are actively monitored.
Darmanin stated that intelligence services had been monitoring the individual, with his phone under surveillance for several days due to suspicions of unusual behavior. However, there were no indications of a planned attack at that time. As per a police source, the individual was characterised as a Russian-born Chechen, although some French media outlets described him as a Russian-born Ingush.
A security source stated that the elder brother of the alleged attacker was currently serving a prison sentence for connections to Islamist militant networks and promoting acts of terrorism.
Over the years, France has been the target of numerous Islamist attacks, the worst of which was a simultaneous attack on cafes and entertainment places in Paris in November 2015 by gunmen and suicide bombers.
Darmanin stated that the heightened state of alert was not a reaction to a specific threat. In 2020, a Chechen teenager beheaded a teacher, Samuel Paty, as a response to the teacher’s use of cartoons that mocked the Prophet Mohammad during a lesson on freedom of expression. “Once again, a school was hit by the barbarity of Islamic terrorism,” said Macron.
A third individual who attempted to enter the school with a suspicious backpack in the incident was arrested, as French media reported. For hours, students were confined to their classrooms.
Education Minister Gabriel Attal stated that security measures would be bolstered in schools across France. Macron said that another attack had been thwarted on Friday in the wider Paris province.
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