Knife-wielding attacker shot, injured at Louvre museum
paris — A machete-wielding man who yelled “Allahu Akbar” (“God is greatest”) was shot and injured as he attacked security forces at the Louvre museum in Paris on Friday, police said.
One soldier was injured in the assault by the knifeman who was shot five times and is alive despite his serious injuries.
Two backpacks he was carrying did not contain explosives, city police chief Michel Cadot said.
Prime Minister Bernard Cazeneuve called the attack “terrorist in nature” after the incident which led streets around the world-famous museum to be sealed off.
Police held hundreds of tourists in secure areas of the renowned tourist attraction after the assailant was shot five times around 10am in a public area near one of the museum’s entrances.
Witnesses described scenes of panic as shoppers, sightseers and workers fled the Louvre complex following the incident.
“We heard gunshots. We didn’t know what it was about. Then we evacuated the employees and we left,” a man who works in a nearby restaurant said, asking not to be named. A woman colleague said: “We saw death coming for us, with everything that’s happening at the moment. We were very, very scared.”
“It’s so sad and shocking... we can’t let them win, it’s horrible,” British tourist Gillian Simms, who was visiting Paris with her daughters, said on Friday.
Jessie McCaw, a 18-year-old from the US state of Montana, said that she had been evacuated but she appeared unfazed.
“I’m not worried because the police seem prepared in France, which is reassuring,” she said.
The huge former royal palace in the heart of the city is home to the Mona Lisa and other renowned works of art but also a shopping complex and numerous exhibition spaces.
“The people who were in the museum — there were about 250 of them — were held at a distance and confined in secure areas of the Louvre,” City police chief Michel Cadot said. “We will start taking them out in small groups.”
France has suffered a string of attacks in recent years, beginning in January 2015 when gunmen killed journalists at the Charlie Hebdo satirical newspaper in Paris for publishing blasphemous cartoons.
Another attacker went on to kill shoppers in a Jewish supermarket, with a total of 17 people dead in three days of bloodshed.
Ten months later, gunmen and suicide bombers from the Daesh group attacked bars, restaurants, a concert hall and the national stadium in Paris on November 13, 2015, killing 130 people. —