At least one person died and two others were injured on Saturday after an assailant armed with a knife and a hammer attacked pedestrians in the Grenelle area near the Eiffel Tower, Interior Minister Gérald Darmanin said.
“The police have just courageously arrested an assailant who attacked pedestrians in Paris, around the Quai de Grenelle. One dead and one injured were treated by the Paris fire brigade. Please avoid the area,” the minister wrote on X (formerly Twitter).
According to AFP, later confirmed by Darmain, the suspect shouted “Allahu Akbar” (“God is greatest”) before being arrested.
The attacker was apparently known to have radical Islamist tendencies and psychiatric problems and seemed to have been triggered by the situation in Gaza, the French minister added.
Darmain said the attacker’s was a man born in France in 1997, living on the outskirts of Paris, who had already been sentenced to four years in prison in 2016 for an attack foiled by the French authorities.
“That’s why he was already registered by our intelligence services,” said the minister, who explained that the young man was on medication for “serious psychiatric problems.”
According to the French press, the dead man, a tourist of German and Filipino nationality, was found stabbed in the back and shoulder on an emblematic bridge over the Seine.
One of the injured, a British tourist, was hit on the head with a hammer while walking with his wife and son
By Nadeem Faisal Baiga
