Terrorism suspected in French killings
Two young women slain in train station by man with butcher’s knives
PARIS — Terror returned to France Sunday as a man shouting “Allahu akbar!” — God is great — killed two women in a frenzied knife attack at Marseille’s main railway station before being shot dead.
The victims were aged 17 and 20, police said. The attacker, reportedly aged about 20, was armed with two butcher’s knives. He was known to the authorities for theft, drug dealing and other crimes but had not been flagged as a potential terrorist.
Dominique, a witness who declined to give her last name, described how he grabbed one of the women from behind and slit her throat. “She couldn’t have seen a thing,” she told CNews television. “She was lying in a pool of blood as I ran away. I heard two shots fired.”
The Paris prosecutor’s office, which oversees all terror cases in France, said it had opened an investigation of the Marseille attack. It did not provide a possible motive.
Security services reviewed CCTV footage that showed the man sitting on a bench shortly before he struck. He began to flee after the first attack but returned to attack a second victim before running at soldiers who were rushing to the scene. They shot him twice just outside the station.
Emmanuel Macron, the president, said he was “deeply outraged by this barbaric act.” Gerard Collomb, the interior minister, described it as “an odious act.” He told journalists outside the station: “This could be of a terrorist nature, but we cannot confirm it fully at this stage.”
Collomb declined to provide any details about the suspect or to identify the victims. However, he confirmed that several witnesses heard the attacker shouting “God is great” in Arabic.
Jean-Claude Gaudin, mayor of Marseille, said: “I think it was a terrorist attack and the individual who was killed seems to have had several identities.” Police who checked the man’s fingerprints found several aliases on file. France remains under a state of emergency declared after the Paris attacks in November 2015.
— With files from Associated Press