Attacker with knife kills 2 at South France train station
PARIS — Two women were killed in southern France on Sunday by an assailant armed with a knife, in an attack that forced the evacuation of a major train station, authorities said.
The assailant was fatally shot by a military patrol after killing the women in front of the Saint-Charles train station in the Mediterranean port city of Marseille. The attack interrupted train service and unnerved the country as it debated the government’s new security bill.
The Paris prosecutor’s office, which handles terrorism cases nationwide, said that it had opened a terrorism investigation, but authorities said the assailant’s motives were not entirely clear.
“This act could be of a terrorist nature, but at this hour we cannot affirm it,” said Gérard Collomb, the French Interior minister, who is in charge of domestic security.
Collomb, who arrived in Marseille on Sunday evening and spoke to reporters at the train station, did not identify the assailant or the two victims, saying only that they were “young women.”
France has been on
high alert for acts of terrorism since 2015, after a string of attacks that killed more than 230 people. The deadliest attack was an assault in November 2015
by coordinated teams of Islamic State operatives who killed 130 people in and around Paris, prompting officials to declare a state of emergency.