Soldiers stabbed guarding centre

TERROR has returned to the streets of France as two soldiers were stabbed and wounded outside a Jewish community centre this week by a Muslim man who is suspected of having tried to travel to the Middle East last week in an attempt to join Isis.

The assailant, a 30-year-old man of Malian origin named by the French media as Moussa Coulibaly, was in custody after the attack in the centre of Nice, southern France.

He did not appear to be related to Amedy Coulibaly, the terrorist who killed a policewoman and four men in a Jewish supermarket in Paris last month. Coulibaly is a common Malian surname.

The man walked up to three soldiers guarding a building that houses Nice’s Israelite Consistory, Radio Shalom and a Jewish association, put down a bag and seemed to be searching for something in it before he produced a least one large knife and tried to stab the nearest soldier.

Coulibaly’s initial thrust was deflected by the trooper’s body armour, witnesses said.

Philippe Pradel, a security official with Nice city hall, said the weapon ‘‘actually resembled a machete more than a knife’’.

The soldier was taken to hospital with a deep wound to his cheek but doctors said his life was not in danger. A second soldier suffered a cut on his leg and a third escaped uninjured before Coulibaly was held by police.

He had a criminal theft and violence.

A police source said a second man, also of Malian origin, had been arrested in Nice after being seen in Coulibaly’s company shortly before the attack.

Anti-terrorist prosecutors were placed in charge of the investigation after officials said Coulibaly had been turned back last week at Istanbul airport, which is often used by European Islamists heading for Syria.

French border police alerted their Turkish counterparts after he bought a one-way ticket from Ajaccio, Corsica, said a secret service source.

He was questioned by agents from the Central Direction of Interior Information, the equivalent of MI5, on his return from Turkey ‘‘but his interview did not enable us to gather enough information to inform the judicial authorities’’, the source said. The agency is certain to face questions over the decision to free Coulibaly.

A total of 10,500 soldiers are patrolling France after last month’s terrorist attacks, which left 17 people dead.

Meanwhile Bernard Cazeneuve, the interior minister, said seven men and a woman were arrested this week on suspicion of belonging to a jihadist network.

Three had returned from Syria in December while the others are suspected of recruiting Islamist fighters in Paris and Lyons.

Islamic State called on Tuesday for fresh attacks against France.

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