TERROR AT NOTRE DAME
Tourists take cover as Algerian attacks Paris cop with a hammer
An ALGERIAn shouted ‘This is for Syria!’ as he attacked police with a hammer outside notre Dame Cathedral yesterday.
Police shot and injured the suspect in the main square outside the Paris tourist attraction shortly after 4.20pm.
After his attack, witnesses heard two shots and the man – who is in his 40s – fell to the ground.
Hundreds of tourists visiting the world famous landmark were caught up in the drama. The suspect had said he was an ‘ Islamic State soldier of the caliphate’, a police source said.
French interior minister Gerard Collomb said the man was ‘believed to be acting alone’ and used ‘rudimentary items to attack the forces of law and order’.
As well as the hammer, he had two kitchen knives. He was identified via a student identity card in his pocket. Mr Collomb said the man – who is thought to have been shot in the chest – was in hospital, but had no further details of his condition.
Witnesses said he approached the officer from behind and struck him with the hammer.
Large numbers of police vehicles raced to the area on the Ile de la Cite island in the River Seine, where notre Dame is situated.
Lawrence Langner, a 73-year-old American tourist, said he heard a commotion and ‘two detonations’, believed to be the gunshots.
About 900 visitors to the cathedral were told to sit on the wooden pews and put their hands up as police investigated the attack.
Among them was former US ambassador to the United nations, nancy Soderberg.
‘It was really scary, we had no idea if there were any accomplices inside,’ she said. ‘ now everyone just wants to go home. We will remember this for the rest of our lives.’
France remains on high alert after a series of deadly terror jihadist attacks in recent years.
In April, traffic officer Xavier Jugele was shot dead while on duty on the Champs Elysees, just days before the French presidential election.
Killer Karim Cheurfi, 39, was shot dead by police.
A month earlier, convicted criminal Ziyed Ben Belgacem, 39, who had links to radical Islam, shouted ‘I am here to die for Allah, there
‘I heard two detonations’
will be deaths,’ seconds before he was shot dead during an attack at Orly airport.He was killed after wrestling a soldier’s gun from her and fleeing into a McDonald’s.
He sent a text message to his brother and father stating ‘ I shot the police’, shortly before he was killed. It followed the shooting in February of a man who tried to storm the historic Louvre art gallery.
On July 14 last year, amid Bastille Day celebrations in nice, a truck was driven into a crowd, killing 86 people. The driver was shot dead. Islamic State claimed responsibility.
Just 12 days later, two IS fanatics stormed into a church in normandy and slit the throat of a priest as he was celebrating mass.
A month earlier, two French police officers were murdered in their Paris home in front of their threeyear-old son.
The killings came after a massacre in the French capital in november 2015 in which IS militants went on the rampage, murdering 130 people.
They slaughtered revellers at the Bataclan music hall and in bars and restaurants in some of the city’s most popular night spots. In January the same year, two brothers killed 11 people in the Paris headquarters of satirical magazine Charlie Hebdo.