A man who attempted a knife attack on soldiers guarding the Louvre Museum in Paris was shot and injured on Friday, highlighting France’s security and terror threat just three months before the French presidential election, reports The Guardian.
Hundreds of tourists were held in secure areas of the Louvre, one of the world’s most visited museums, after the man was shot five times by soldiers on patrol outside. Believed to be in his 30s, he struck at around 10am on a stairway in the Carrousel du Louvre, an underground shopping centre near the entrance to the museum. Wielding a knife, he ran at a group of soldiers on patrol shouting “Allahu Akbar”, or “God is greatest”.
The incident, in which one soldier was slightly injured, was described by the French prime minister, Bernard Cazeneuve, as “terrorist in nature”.
The suspect has not been formally identified but French police had established that the man was a 29-year-old Egyptian who arrived in France on 26 January after obtaining a tourist visa in Dubai, the Paris prosecutor said.
Police searched an apartment the man had rented in Paris and are now working to establish whether he acted alone, on impulse, or on orders from someone, prosecutor François Molins told a news conference. The man was wearing a black T-shirt with a death’s head emblem when he attacked soldiers checking bags near the museum’s shopping mall “with a machete in each hand”, Molins said.
He struck one soldier and knocked another one to the ground. When he continued his attacks the soldier on the ground shot him in the abdomen, Molins said.
Two rucksacks carried by the suspected attacker were checked by bomb disposal specialists at the scene and were found not to contain explosives.
Michel Cadot, the Paris police prefect, said the man had headed towards soldiers “armed with a machete” and shouting threats and “Allahu Akbar”. Soldiers opened fire and he was injured by gunshots, including to the stomach, and was being treated in hospital.
Cadot told reporters: “We are dealing with an attack from an individual who was clearly aggressive and represented a direct threat and whose comments lead us to believe that he wished to carry out a terrorist incident.
“There was also a second individual who was behaving suspiciously, who has also been detained, but for now there does not appear to be a link between that individual and the attack.”