6 stabbed in busy Paris train station before attacker is shot by police
PARIS — The Paris prosecutor said investigators haven’t yet been able to identify the attacker who wounded six people with a sharp metallic hook in the French capital’s Gare du Nord train station on Wednesday before being shot and wounded by police.
The suspect attacked several people, including a police officer, during the morning rush hour “with no apparent reason at this stage,” Paris prosecutor Laure Beccuau said in a statement.
Beccuau said that the assailant was undergoing surgery at a hospital after being shot twice in the chest and once in the right arm. Investigators haven’t yet been able to interrogate him, she said.
The process of identifying the suspect was still ongoing because he was registered under several identities in a fingerprint database, based on his declarations in previous cases involving him, the statement said. He is about 20 years old and might have been born in Libya or Algeria, the statement said.
The statement described his weapon as a “metallic hook from which the longer part ends in a point.”
The victims were two men, ages 36 and 41, three women ages 40, 47 and 53, and a 56-year-old police officer, Beccuau’s statement said. Only the 36-year-old man remained hospitalized on Wednesday evening with non-life-threatening injuries, it said.
The eight defendants received prison sentences ranging from two to 18 years for their roles in the 2016 seaside terrorist attack in Nice, France.
French Interior Minister Gérald Darmanin, who went to the site earlier in the day, thanked police “for their effective and courageous reaction.”
“Without the extremely rapid intervention, there would surely be deaths,” he said, detailing how the suspect was stopped within a minute of attacking his first victim.
“At 6:42, the first acts were described. At 6:43, the police used their administrative weapon after his passage of violence,” Darmanin said.
He said the attacker’s weapon was likely homemade. He said the suspect was reported not to have said anything during the assault and that investigators have not discovered any extremist links.
Warm weather is helping Europe keep the lights and heat on this winter despite Russia cutting off most of its natural gas supply to the continent.
According to Beccuau’s statement, the preliminary investigation found that the suspect threw himself upon a man in front of the train station, stabbing him about 20 times.
The assailant then entered the station and attacked four more civilians and the police officer, a member of France’s border guard, French media reports said.
Screams alerted two other police officers who intervened as the suspect was attacking the border police officer. The officer was stabbed in the back but not seriously wounded because of a bulletproof vest, Darmanin said.
Police opened an attempted murder investigation. No specific motive has currently been determined by authorities. France remains jittery following a series of deadly terror attacks since 2015.
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