2023-12-03 10:12:00
The events took place around 9:00 p.m., near the Bir Hakeim bridge spanning the Seine. The stabbed tourist, 23, is of German and Filipino nationality. The man then attacked two other people with a hammer, one of French nationality aged 60 and another of British nationality aged 66.
The attacker, Armand Rajabpour-Miyandoab, a Frenchman born in 1997 and whose parents are Iranian, was arrested shortly after and taken into police custody. He is known to the justice services for radical Islamism and psychiatric disorders and is said to have shouted “Allah akbar” at the time of the events, according to a police source.
He reportedly told the police who arrested him that he “could no longer bear to see Muslims die, both in Afghanistan and in Palestine.” He would also have declared that he “resented” for “what was happening in Gaza” and that France would be “complicit in what Israel was doing” there, said Interior Minister Gérald Darmanin during a a press briefing at the scene of the attack.
This man had already been arrested in 2016 by the General Directorate of Internal Security (DGSI) for a planned violent action in La Défense, west of Paris. He was sentenced to five years of imprisonment and was released after four years of detention, according to this source.
The two injured are a Frenchman, aged around sixty, and a foreign tourist, he said. The nationality of the latter has not been specified at this stage.
“Help”
Joseph S., 37, a supermarket manager, witnessed the scene from a bar opposite the bridge. While smoking shisha with a friend, he heard screams and people shouting “help, help” and running. He describes a man “with a hammer in his hand” who attacks a man. Still according to this witness, in “5-10 minutes”, the police arrived.
Emmanuel Macron had from Doha, before taking off for France, Gérald Darmanin on the phone who informed him of the attack, we learned from those around the president.
“I send all my condolences to the family and loved ones of the German national who died this evening during the terrorist attack in Paris and think with emotion of the people currently injured and in care,” Mr. Macron wrote on X.
“We will not give in to terrorism,” Prime Minister Elisabeth Borne said on Sunday on X. “My thoughts are with the victim, the injured and their loved ones. I salute the courage and professionalism of our law enforcement and our emergency services mobilized,” she wrote again.
Many reactions poured in during the evening. “Once again terrorism has struck on our soil, in the middle of the evening, in Paris. I provide all my support to the victims and their families,” said Assembly President Yaël Braun-Pivet.
The president of the Ile-de-France region Valérie Pécresse sent her “thoughts for the deceased and the injured”. “All light must be shed on this attack in the heart of Paris,” she added.
The attack comes less than two months after that in Arras which cost the life of a teacher in mid-October and led to the Vigipirate plan being raised to the maximum “emergency attack” level.
Knife attack in Paris: French politics reacts
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