Rescue Workers at the Scene Today. Photo: AP
Gina George/
A French soldier shot and seriously wounded a machete-wielding man carrying two backpacks and yelling “Allahu Akbar” — “God is great!” today in Paris.
The man was shot as he tried to enter a shopping area under the Paris Louvre museum in what police said appeared to be a terrorist attack.
He was shot five times near the famed museum’s shopping mall after he whipped out a knife and lunged at soldiers who told him he could not enter with the bags, authorities said.
“That’s when he got the knife out and that’s when he tried to stab the soldier,” police official Yves Lefebvre said. Another soldier suffered a scalp injury in the melee.
The backpacks contained no explosives, police Chief Michel Cadot said.
“It was an attack by a person… who represented a direct threat and whose actions suggested a terrorist context,” he said.
Interior Ministry spokesman Pierre-Henry Brandet said a second person was detained but it was unclear whether the suspect was involved in the attack.
Prime Minister Bernard Cazeneuve called the attack “terrorist in nature,” Agence France-Presse reported.
The identity and nationality of the attacker, who was carrying two machetes, were not yet determined, Brandet told reporters.
An anti-terrorism inquiry has been opened, the public prosecutor said in a statement, Reuters reported.
Olivier Majewski was just leaving his scooter in the parking lot beneath the Louvre when he saw about 30 or 40 people running and screaming, “There’s been a terror attack!”
The 53-year-old, who hid for about 15 minutes before making his way upstairs, said people were “panicked”.
The incident at the Louvre, home of the world-famous Mona Lisa, occurred with France on its highest state of alert with thousands of troops patrolling the capital following a series of attacks in the last few years.
“The people who were in the museum, there were about 250 of them, were held at a distance and confined in secure areas of the Louvre,” Cadot said.
In January 2015, jihadist gunmen killed journalists at the Charlie Hebdo satirical newspaper in Paris in retaliation for publishing cartoons of the Prophet Mohammed.
Another attacker went on to kill shoppers in a Jewish supermarket, with a total of 17 people dead in three days of bloodshed.
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Each time I see such a dastardly act of terrorism being perpetrated by Islamic extremists, which most of the time are being executed by minority and isolated few, they always tend to justify President Trump's ban on some countries.