Terror probe launched after Paris knife attack

PARIS — A knifeman shouting “Allahu akbar” was shot dead by police in central Paris late Saturday after he killed one person and injured four others, sparking a terror probe and panic on the streets of France’s capital.

The attack took place near the city’s main opera house in an area full of bars, restaurants and theaters which were brimming on a weekend night.

Witnesses described scenes of panic as Parisians realized another potential terror attack was underway in a country already reeling from a string of jihadist assaults in the last three years that have killed more than 245 people.

“I was taking orders and I saw a young woman trying to get into the restaurant in panic,” Jonathan, a waiter at a Korean restaurant, told AFP. The woman was bleeding and the attacker appeared behind her. He said a young man tried to fend off the assailant who then fled. “The attacker entered a shopping street, I saw him with a knife in his hand,” he said. “He looked crazy.”

Milan, 19, said he saw “several people in distress” including a woman with wounds to her neck and leg. “Firemen were giving her first aid. I heard two, three shots and a policeman told me that the man had been overpowered.”

In a tweet French President Emmanuel Macron said: “France once again pays the price of blood.”

Prosecutors cited witnesses as saying the man shouted “Allahu

akbar” (God is greatest) as he went on the rampage, and added that a terror investigation had been launched.

WOUNDED OUT OF DANGER

The Islamic State group claimed responsibility, according to the SITE monitoring group, but provided no corroborating proof to back the claim.

“The executor of the stabbing operation in the city of Paris is a soldier of the Islamic State and the operation was carried out in response to the calls to target the coalition states,” a “security source” told IS’s official Amaq news agency, according to SITE.

Two of those wounded were rushed to hospital in a serious condition but Interior Minister Gerard Collomb later told reporters all the victims were out of danger and would survive their injuries.

French Prime Minister Edouard Philippe said police were on the scene “within five minutes” of the attack and that some nine minutes later the assailant was dead, he added.

“The speed of the response obviously avoided a heavier toll,” he said.

A police source told AFP one officer tried to restrain the attacker with a taser but when that failed a colleague shot the man dead.