On Sunday French authorities said that they had launched an anti-terror probe into the stabbing attack by a man on the streets of central Paris
PARIS, France – On Sunday, French authorities said that they had launched an anti-terror probe into the stabbing attack by a man on the streets of central Paris on Saturday evening.
Authorities revealed that the suspect who launched the knife attack, was a French national of Chechen origin and had yelled ‘Allahu Akbar!’ after which he launched his stabbing attack near opera house.
The attacker reportedly managed to stab a person to death and wounded four others.
French investigators said that the police managed to kill shoot and kill the man, shortly after the attack began, and that they were treating the assault as a terrorist attack.
The attack on Saturday took place near the Palais Garnier, the Parisian ballet and opera house, in a neighborhood that was packed with revelers at the many restaurants and bars.
Soon after the suspect was brought down, the police cordoned off the area for hours and spoke to several witnesses.
They said they were searching for any potential accomplices of the attacker.
In a statement released on Sunday, Paris prosecutor Francois Molins said the man yelled “Allahu Akbar!”—“God is great” in Arabic—during the stabbing, indicating the attack was the latest in a string of assaults committed by Islamist extremists in France.
Later in the day, a French judicial official revealed that the man had previously been flagged as a potential terror risk in one of France’s security databases.
The country’s government reportedly uses this security database to keep the names of thousands of people who have expressed sympathy for radical Islam.
Investigators also revealed that the attacker’s mother and father are in police custody for questioning.
The identity of the suspect – who was born in Chechnya, a republic in southwest Russia, in 1997 – was crucial since Chechnya is a predominantly Muslim region in the south of Russia and has been a major source of foreign fighters in the ranks of Islamic State.
In recent years, Western security officials have grown increasingly concerned about radicalization among Chechens living in Europe and the U. S.
Reports stated that for long now, ISIS has been recruiting radicals from the North Caucasus, a semiautonomous region of Russia that has been in conflict with Moscow since declaring independence in 1991.
According to analysts, thousands of people from the former Soviet Union have gone to fight for terror cells in Syria.
The attack on Saturday was immediately claimed by the Islamic State via its Amaq media service.
The terrorist group called the assailant a „soldier of the Islamic State.“
Following the attack French President Emmanuel Macron wrote on Twitter, “France once again pays the price of blood but won’t give an inch to the enemies of liberty.”
He also paid tribute to the courage of the police who „neutralized the terrorist“ during the attack.
On Sunday, Paris Mayor Anne Hidalgo told reporters gathered at the site of the attack that, „I am with the victim and with the young man, young French and Parisian man, who died yesterday. But we are here and this city is still alive.“
Since January 2015, when gunmen killed 17 in the Paris region – including 12 at the office of the satirical newspaper Charlie Hebdo, and others at a kosher grocery store and the Paris suburb of Montrough – France has been on high alert.
Later the same year, in November 2015, Islamic State militants from a territory it then controlled in Syria managed to kill 130 people in and around Paris.
The attack was defined as one of the worst terrorist attacks in European history.
In 2016,86 people were killed in Nice when a truck rammed into crowds during Bastille Day celebrations.
Recently, in March this year, a Moroccan-born man killed four people in southern France and one of his victims was identified as French gendarme Lt. Col. Arnaud Beltrame.
Beltrame was shot and killed after trading himself for a female hostage the gunman was holding at a supermarket in Trebes in southern France, prompting an outpouring of tributes from nations around the world.
