Terrorist kills two women in Marseille attack
Soldiers gun down man who was known to the police only as a thief, petty criminal, and drug dealer
Terror returned to France yesterday as a man shouting “Allahu akbar” killed two women in a knife attack at Marseille’s main railway station before being shot dead. The victims were aged 17 and 20, police said. The attacker, aged about 20, was known to the authorities for violence and theft.
TERROR returned to France yesterday as a man shouting “Allahu akbar” 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 up as a potential terrorist.
Islamic State of Iraq and the Levant later claimed responsibility for the attack. The group’s Amaq propaganda agency cited a “security source” as saying: “The executor of the stabbing operation in the city of Marseille… is from the soldiers of the Islamic State.” Dominique, a witness, described how the attacker 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.”
A terrorism investigation was opened after 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.
Gérard Collomb, the interior minister, told journalists outside the station: “This could be of a terrorist nature, but we cannot confirm it fully at this stage.”
He confirmed that several witnesses heard the attacker shouting “God is greatest” 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. Samia Ghali, a local senator, urged the public to be vigilant. “At any time, in any place, the threat may return,” he warned. More than 200 police evacuated and sealed off Saint-charles station and trains serving the city were suspended. Emmanuel Macron, the president, said he was “deeply outraged by this barbaric act”.
France remains under a state of emergency declared after the Paris attacks in November 2015.
The government extended Operation Sentinelle earlier this month and the French parliament is to vote on a bill next week that would make permanent many of the emergency powers given to police to detain suspects and carry out surveillance.
♦ Canadian police arrested a suspect in Saturday night’s attacks in Edmonton, Alberta, that injured a traffic officer and four others, describing the incidents as “acts of terrorism.”
A man struck the officer with his vehicle near a football stadium, stabbed him and fled.