2 wounded in Paris knife attack near former Charlie Hebdo office
PARIS — A knife-wielding assailant wounded two people in Paris on Friday near the site of the former Charlie Hebdo office — the scene of a 2015 terrorist attack targeting the satirical newspaper that is now the focus of a criminal trial.
A primary suspect was arrested a short time later. Gérald Darmanin, the French interior minister, said Friday evening that the suspect, believed to be an 18year-old Pakistani, had not been previously identified by authorities as a possible extremist.
But he called the attack an “act of Islamist terrorism” because of its location — in front of the building where Charlie Hebdo had its offices at the time of the January 2015 attack that left 12 dead — and because of the nature of the assault, against random bystanders. French prosecutors have opened a terrorism investigation.
“It is a new, bloody attack against our country,” Darmanin told France 2 television.
Prime Minister Jean Castex, who cut short a scheduled speech after the attack occurred, told reporters that it happened “in a symbolic location,” not far from a mural that pays tribute to the victims of the 2015 massacre. Authorities also pointed to the timing of the attack, which came amid the ongoing trial of several people accused of aiding the 2015 assailants.
Authorities did not provide evidence of a link to the past attack, however, or say whether the suspect had any affiliation with a terrorist group.
The victims’ lives were not in danger, Castex said. They were employees of Premières Lignes, a documentary production company next door to the former Charlie Hebdo office. Some of its employees were the first witnesses to the January 2015 attack.
Luc Hermann, a journalist and filmmaker at Premières Lignes, told the BFM TV news channel that the two employees, a man and a woman, appeared to have been set upon “totally by chance.”
Hermann said that it was “a surprise attack, by a man armed with a very large bladed weapon,” who inflicted “extremely violent blows.”
Al-Qaida had recently issued new threats against Charlie Hebdo, which moved after the 2015 attack to highly secure offices elsewhere. The threats followed the newspaper’s decision to reprint satirical cartoons of the Prophet Muhammad at the opening of the trial.
A few hours after the attack Friday, the weekly wrote on Twitter that its “entire team offers its support and solidarity to its former neighbors and colleagues” at Premières Lignes, “and to the people affected by this heinous attack.”
The main suspect was arrested in the Bastille neighborhood, not far from the site of the attack, police said.
Jean-François Ricard, France’s top anti-terrorism prosecutor, told reporters that police had taken a second person into custody to verify “their connections to the main perpetrator.”
Five other people were taken into custody later Friday, although no details were disclosed.
Darmanin, the interior minister, said police were still trying to determine the primary suspect’s exact identity and age. Preliminary investigation, he said, had determined that the suspect had arrived in France three years ago as an “isolated minor,” and had been briefly under arrest a month ago for carrying a weapon — a screwdriver. The exact circumstances of that arrest were unclear.