A tourist was killed and two other people were injured on the evening of Saturday, December 2, in a knife and hammer attack near the Eiffel Tower in Paris. The anti-terrorism prosecution (Pnat) has taken up the investigation into the attack perpetrated by a Frenchman, known for radical Islamism and psychiatric disorders. This attack comes less than two months after that in Arras which cost the life of a teacher in mid-October and led to the Vigipirate plan being raised to the maximum “emergency attack” level.
Facts
“The attack happened shortly after 9 p.m. between the quai de Grenelle and Bir Hakeim, the attacker attacked a couple of tourists,” reported Gérald Darmanin. A tourist of German and Filipino nationality, born in 1999, “died from stabbings”, continued the Minister of the Interior. The attacker “attacked the wife of this tourist” but her life was saved “thanks to a taxi driver who saw the scene”.
The attacker then crossed the bridge spanning the Seine. Pursued by the police, he clearly attacked two other people whose lives were not in danger: one was reportedly injured by a hammer blow to the eye and the other was particularly “shocked”, according to the story of Gérald Darmanin. The two injured are a Frenchman aged around sixty and a foreign tourist, he said. The nationality of the latter has not been specified at this stage.
Joseph, 37, a supermarket manager, witnessed the scene from a bar opposite the bridge. While smoking shisha with a friend, he heard screams and people shouting “help, help” and running. He describes a man “with a hammer in his hand” who attacks a man. Still according to this witness, in “5-10 minutes”, the police arrived.
The anti-terrorism prosecution indicated to AFP that it had opened an investigation for assassination and attempted assassination in connection with a terrorist enterprise and for criminal terrorist association.
The attacker
The assailant, Armand RM, a Frenchman born in 1997 to Iranian parents, was arrested shortly after the events, subdued with a taser, and placed in police custody. Known for radical Islamism and psychiatric disorders, the attacker shouted “Allah Akbar” at the time of the incident, according to a police source.
He reportedly told the police officers who arrested him that he “could no longer bear to see Muslims die, both in Afghanistan and Palestine,” and also said he “resented” for “what was happening in Gaza.” “. According to him, France would be “complicit in what Israel was doing” there, Interior Minister Gérald Darmanin said during a press briefing on site.
The investigators will look into the medical follow-up of the author, a man with a “very unstable profile, very easily influenced”, according to a security source at AFP. “Whether he was medically monitored as he should have been and as he was for a time, that is a question that will arise,” a police source told AFP. Armand RM had already been arrested in 2016 by the General Directorate of Internal Security (DGSI) for a planned violent action in La Défense, west of Paris. He was sentenced to five years of imprisonment and was released after four years of detention, according to this source.
He lived with his parents, in Essonne, according to Gérald Darmanin, and published a video on social networks claiming responsibility for his attack, police and security sources confirmed to AFP. In the video, the attacker mentions “the news, the government, the murder of innocent Muslims”, detailed the security source. At this stage, investigators do not know when it was filmed, but it was posted online “concurrently” with the act, according to this source.
The reactions
“I send all my condolences to the family and loved ones of the German national who died this evening during the terrorist attack in Paris and think with emotion of the people currently injured and in care,” Mr. Macron wrote on X ( ex-Twitter). “We will not give in in the face of terrorism,” Prime Minister Élisabeth Borne said this Sunday, December 3, still on law enforcement and our mobilized emergency services,” she wrote.
Many reactions poured in during the evening. “Once again terrorism has struck on our soil, in the middle of the evening, in Paris. I provide all my support to the victims and their families,” said Assembly President Yaël Braun-Pivet. The president of the Ile-de-France region Valérie Pécresse sent her “thoughts for the deceased and the injured”. “All light must be shed on this attack in the heart of Paris,” she added.