Four children and an adult have been injured in a knife attack in the picturesque town of Annecy in the French Alps, reports The Guardian.
At least three of the victims are in a critical condition in hospital.
At about 9.45am, a man armed with a knife entered a children’s playground near the town’s famous lake and attacked a group of children aged about three years old as they played, a security source and a local official told AFP.
The French president, Emmanuel Macron, tweeted that it was an act of “absolute cowardice” and that the nation was in shock.
Witnesses described the suspected knifeman running around in a frenzy, apparently attacking people at random, before he was stopped by police near the banks of Lake Annecy.
“He wanted to attack everyone. I moved away and he lunged at an old man and woman and stabbed the old man,” former professional footballer Anthony Le Tallec, who was running in the park, told the local Dauphine Libéré newspaper.
Another witness, Malo, told BFMTV that the culprit attacked the children before targeting an old man and was “shouting, but it wasn’t really comprehensible”.
Another witness told local public radio, France Bleu, that the attacker had seem “confused”.
One witness, named as Nelly, told France Info radio: “People were running, crying, panicking … it was horrible.”
The Haute-Savoie MP, Virginie Duby-Muller, told BFMTV: “I’m horrified … attacking children is abominable. It’s unthinkable what happened here this morning in a place which is so calm and peaceful, a place loved by residents and tourists alike. We’re shaken.”