Terror at the Louvre
British pupils hide as shot knifeman cries ‘Allahu Akbar’
A MACHETE-WIELDING suspected terrorist yelled ‘Allahu Akbar’ as he attacked a soldier guarding the Louvre in Paris.
Troops shot him five times to ‘neutralise’ him and foil a massacre of tourists in the museum, which houses the Mona Lisa.
A group of Surrey sixth-formers were among hundreds of visitors in the attraction who were led to a secure area and told to crouch down.
After the knifeman was shot, they had an anxious wait as bomb disposal experts examined two backpacks he was carrying to check they did not contain explosives. The attacker was seriously injured after being hit in the legs and stomach and was last night under armed guard in the intensive care unit of a Paris hospital. Police later raided an address in the city as French media reported that the suspect may be an Egyptian in his twenties who arrived in Paris via Dubai late last month.
French president Francois Hollande praised the soldiers’ actions, saying ‘this operation prevented an attack whose terrorist nature leaves little doubt’.
He warned it showed the ‘threat of terrorism is here to stay’ in France, which has been under a state of emergency since November 2015.
US President Donald Trump wrote on Twitter: ‘New radical Islamic terrorist has just attacked in Louvre Museum in Paris. Tourists were locked down. France on edge again. GET SMART U.S.’
The attack happened at 9am in a shopping area that leads to the museum. The man, said to
‘Threat is here to stay’
have two machetes, went on the rampage when a patrol of four soldiers told him he could not enter with his bags.
‘That’s when he got the knife out and that’s when he tried to stab the soldier,’ said police union official Yves Lefebvre.
The patrol tried to fight off the knifeman before one soldier opened fire to ‘neutralise the attacker’, Paris police chief Michel Cadot said.
He added that the unidentified assailant ‘appeared to be acting alone’.
The shout of ‘Allahu Akbar’, Arabic for ‘God is great’, pointed to extremist terrorism, Mr Cadot said.
A photo, said to have been taken by a tour guide, shows what is believed to be the suspect lying at the foot of stairs, surrounded by armed soldiers.
Witnesses described panic as shoppers, tourists and workers fled the Louvre complex. Olivier Majewski was leaving his scooter in the parking area beneath the Louvre when he saw 30 or 40 ‘panicked’ people running and screaming ‘there’s been a terror attack’.
The 53-year-old said he hid for about 15 minutes before making his way upstairs.
A woman who works in a nearby restaurant said: ‘We saw death coming for us, with everything that’s happening at the moment. We were very, very scared.’
Police sealed off entrances to the Louvre while tourists inside the museum were confined in secure areas of the building.
They included pupils and staff from Godalming College in Surrey, who were on a history of art trip. The school said all those involved were safe.
France has suffered a string of attacks in recent years, beginning in January 2015 when jihadist gunmen killed journalists at the Charlie Hebdo satirical newspaper in Paris, in revenge for publishing cartoons of the Prophet Mohammed.
Another attacker killed shoppers in a Jewish supermarket, with a total of 17 people dead in three days of bloodshed.
Ten months later, gunmen and suicide bombers from Islamic State attacked bars, restaurants, a concert hall and the national stadium in Paris, killing 130 people.
And last July, a Tunisian extremist drove a lorry through crowds celebrating Bastille Day in Nice, on the Riviera, crushing 86 people to death.
In November, French police broke up an alleged jihadist terror ring which was thought to be planning to attack Paris.
Yesterday’s incident came on the day the city was submitting its formal bid to host the 2024 summer Olympics.