Four young children and one adult were injured in a horrific knife attack in a scenic lakeside park in southeastern France on Thursday, according to reports.
The stabbing spree in the alpine town of Annecy left the adult and two of the children in a life-threatening condition, police said. Authorities believe the preschool victims now fighting to survive are about three years old.
Earlier reports Thursday suggested that as many as eight children may have been hurt. Gérald Darmanin, France’s interior minister, confirmed the attack on Twitter and said the knifeman “was arrested thanks for the very rapid intervention of the police.”
Multiple French media reports citing police sources claim the attacker told authorities he was a Syrian refugee. Police have not confirmed the identity of the suspect, saying only that he was a man in his 30s. He was arrested in the town around 20 miles south of the Swiss city of Geneva at around 9:45 a.m. local time.
Reports say the man started stabbing children in the park—some of whom were in strollers—before fleeing and attacking an elderly man close by. Armed officers reportedly shot the suspect in the legs before he was detained. Antoine Armand, a local lawmaker, told BFMTV that children were “savagely attacked” on a playground.
In a statement on Twitter, French President Emmanuel Macron described the incident as an “attack of absolute cowardice.” “The nation is in shock,” he added, saying the country’s thoughts were with the victims, their families, and the emergency services.
“I was running by the lake when I saw, suddenly, dozens of people coming quickly towards me, in the opposite direction,” Anthony Le Tallec, a soccer star who used to play for Liverpool, said in a video on Instagram on Thursday, Le Parisien reports.
“I wondered what was going on. A mom yelled at me: Run, run, there’s someone stabbing everyone, all along the lake! He stabbed children, run, run!” He added that he then witnessed the suspect stabbing a man before being shot by police.
Lawmakers in the French National Assembly stood for a minute’s silence on Thursday. “There are very young children in a critical state and I ask you to observe a minute of silence for them, for their families,” Yaël Braun-Pivet, the assembly’s president, said.
“We hope that the consequences of this extremely serious attack are not consequences that will send the country into mourning.”
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And this is what you get when you don’t vet immigrants coming across your borders. You get children, innocent children stabbed, maimed, raped and/or killed. Free range immigration needs to stop. There needs to be strict vetting policies in place in all countries to protect the innocent, to protect citizens (lawful citizens).
So many people were around why didn’t they got together and jumped on that asshole to stop him. If it was in America they would have stopped him but in France people r so chicken it’s a total disaster this country and it is becoming so so bad in France and the police is sooooooo slow that you cannot count on them. Horrible country full of horrible migrants and nobody does anything about it. Do not go there.
The armed officers aimed too low, should have taken this stabber out and no more kids would be attacked by him again.
It is a good thing this happened in France! If the Syrian terrorist had did this crime in the USA the children and old man would have been arrested! And the terrorist would have been given reparations! They have turned bat-shit crazy in the states!