A knife-wielding man spread terror in a park near Lake Annecy in the French Alps on Thursday, injuring six people, including four small children, before being arrested.

“Absolutely cowardly attack this morning in a park in Annecy. Several children and an adult are between life and death. The nation is in shock,” French President Emmanuel Macron wrote on social media.

A knife-wielding man wounded 6 people, including four children, in a park near Lake Annecy in the French Alps this Thursday (8) – Photo: OLIVIER CHASSIGNOLE/AFP/ND

The 32-year-old attacker was a citizen of Syria and lived in Sweden for ten years, where he received refugee status on April 26. He also applied for asylum in France in November, according to a police source.

Attaque d’une lâcheté absolue ce matin dans un park à Annecy. Des enfants et un Adulte sont entre la vie et la mort. La Nation est sous le choc. Nos pensées les accompagnent ainsi que leurs familles et les secours mobilizeses.

— Emmanuel Macron (@EmmanuelMacron) June 8, 2023

The attack took place around 9:45 am (4:45 GMT) when the children, about three years old, were in the Gardens of Europe, a very popular park on the shores of Lake Annecy.

Attack

According to witnesses heard by the BFMTV network, the man tried to escape from the park after the attack and attacked the elderly man, after which he was quickly detained by police.

“He wanted to attack everyone. I left and he attacked my grandparents and stabbed my grandfather,” Anthony Le Tallec, a former Saint-Étienne and Liverpool player, told regional newspaper Le Dauphiné libéré.

The former footballer, who was running along the lakeshore, described the situation of “general panic” and assured that the attacker was wearing a “bandana or turban”, which he removed in front of him.

According to the latest data from the prefecture of Haute-Savoie, six people were injured. One adult and two minors are at risk of death, a source close to the case said.

The police cordoned off the area around the park, an AFP journalist confirmed. According to Le Dauphiné libéré, most of the victims were transferred to the Annecy Genevois hospital, while the witnesses were transferred to a building located near the scene of the drama.

minute of silence

From the left to the far right, political leaders condemned the attack and expressed solidarity with the victims and their families. The National Assembly observed a minute of silence.

French Prime Minister Elisabeth Born and Interior Minister Gérald Darmanin will travel to the Alpine resort town of about 140,000, their offices told AFP.

In the context of political tensions over future migration reform, the leader of the right-wing opposition Os Republicanos (LR) party, Eric Ciotti, who advocates a tightening of the asylum regime, called this Thursday (8) to “take on the consequences” of the attack “without naivety, with strength and clarity “.

Authorities have not yet determined whether it was a terrorist attack.

jihadist attacks

Over the past decade, France has been the target of a number of traumatic jihadist attacks, such as the attacks against the satirical magazine Charlie Hebdo, the Stade de France and the Bataclan concert hall in 2015, and the city of Nice (southeast). in 2016.

More recently, the 2020 beheading of a teacher in broad daylight outside his school outside Paris by a Chechen refugee sparked outrage and a nationwide debate about the impact of radical Islam in France.