PARIS — A French police officer was attacked and stabbed as he sat in his patrol automotive early Monday morning within the metropolis of Cannes, on the French Riviera, in response to the French authorities.
Whereas the officer was unhurt as a result of he was sporting a protecting bulletproof vest and the assailant was rapidly taken into custody, the incident triggered alarms due to the brazen nature of the assault and due to a historical past of terrorist assaults in opposition to the police in France.
Gérald Darmanin, France’s inside minister, rapidly left Paris for Cannes and was scheduled to satisfy with the officers concerned within the incident, a number of of whom shot on the attacker to cease him.
“The cops bravely and professionally responded and saved the lifetime of their colleague and neutralized the person,” Mr. Darmanin advised reporters in Cannes.
Éric Ciotti, a lawmaker who represents the Alpes-Maritimes space that features Cannes, on Twitter known as the assault a “terrorist assault,” and several other French media retailers, quoting nameless police sources, mentioned the assailant had mentioned throughout the assault that he was appearing “within the identify of the prophet.”
However the French authorities haven’t but formally introduced a suspected motive for the assault. France’s antiterrorism prosecutor’s workplace, which handles terrorism instances nationwide, had not taken over the case by Monday afternoon.
Mr. Darmanin didn’t determine the attacker and declined to touch upon what the person might need mentioned throughout the assault, which occurred in entrance of a police station within the metropolis middle.
However he mentioned the assailant was an Algerian man in his late 30s who had legally arrived in France from Italy lately and who had filed for a French residency allow a number of weeks in the past. The person had no prison file and had not been flagged by intelligence companies for extremism, Mr. Darmanin mentioned.
The officer was sitting in a police automotive with three colleagues round 6:30 a.m. and was about to go on patrol when the assailant walked up, “ostensibly to ask for some data,” Mr. Darmanin advised reporters.
“As soon as the door was opened, he attacked with a knife,” Mr. Darmanin mentioned. The attacker stabbed the officer within the abdomen earlier than attempting to assault one other officer. A number of of the officers then shot the assailant, who was hospitalized with severe accidents, Mr. Darmanin mentioned.
The officer was “extraordinarily shocked” however unhurt due to his bulletproof vest, Mr. Darmanin added.
Safety forces have change into a recurrent goal for Islamist terrorists in France over the previous decade.
In April, a knife-wielding Islamist extremist killed an officer at a police station about 25 miles southwest of Paris earlier than being shot useless.
Different assaults embrace an Islamic State assailant who fatally stabbed an off-duty police officer and his companion, a police worker, at their residence in 2016. The following 12 months, a gunman killed a veteran police officer on the Champs-Élysées in Paris.
And in 2019, in one of many worst assaults on the French police thus far, a radicalized police worker stabbed 4 of his colleagues to dying on the Paris Police Headquarters.