Man with knife kills 1, wounds 4 during central Paris attack
PARIS — A man armed with a knife attacked five people in a central neighborhood near the Paris Opera on Saturday, according to French police, killing one and wounding four, two seriously.
The interior minister, Gérard Collomb, said the attacker was killed by police.
A restaurant waiter, Amine Belkacem, 50, who was serving diners in a Moroccan restaurant, said he saw young people running away from where the stabbing had happened. He asked them what was going on, and they told him they had heard shots and started fleeing.
Belkacem said he then saw a man running down the street who tried to stab at someone who was in a taxi.
“This is such a quiet neighborhood, we never expected anything like this,” Belkacem said.
The stabbing happened about 600 yards from the Opera Garnier, in a lively area known for its Japanese restaurants.
Streets were closed in the area, which is within walking distance of the the home of the Paris Opera.
The Islamic State group’s Aamaq news agency said in a statement early Sunday that the assailant carried out the attack in response to the group’s calls for supporters to target members of the U.S.-led military coalition squeezing the extremists out of Iraq and Syria. The Aamaq statement did not provide evidence for its claim.
President Emmanuel Macron tweeted his praise for police who “neutralized the terrorist” and said “France is once again paying the price of blood but will not cede an inch to enemies of freedom.”
The knife assault in Paris recalled an attack in June in London on a warm Saturday night, when assailants stabbed people strolling through the popular Borough Market area after abandoning a van they had driven into pedestrians on London Bridge. Eight people were killed and more than 20 wounded in that attack.
In August, police in the southwest Finnish city of Turku shot and wounded a knife assailant who killed two people and wounded eight.
A man in Hamburg, Germany, in July fatally stabbed one person and wounded five at a supermarket. Police arrested him as he tried to flee.