Paris. Prime Minister says France will not give in to terrorism

“NWe will not give an inch to terrorism”, wrote the head of the French Government on the social network X (formerly Twitter), adding: “My thoughts are with the victim, the injured and their families”.

“I salute the courage and professionalism of our law enforcement agencies and our mobilized relief services”, wrote Élisabeth Borne.

The attack, carried out on Saturday night in Paris, by a French citizen born in 1997, who fatally stabbed a young German tourist and injured two more people with hammer blows, will be treated as an act of terrorism, with the National Prosecutor’s Office Anti-terrorist already indicated who will take over the investigation.

And the French Public Prosecutor’s Office opened an investigation into murder and attempted murder.

The attacker, who shouted “Allahu Akbar” (“God is great”) before being arrested, had already been sentenced in 2016 to four years in prison for planning an attack, said French Interior Minister Gérald Darmanin in statements to the press at the site of the attack, the 15th district of Paris, in the west of the city, a few hundred meters from the Eiffel Tower.

The author, around 20 years old, was already known to the police for Islamic radicalism and also psychiatric disorders and, according to a police source, stated that he cannot bear to see Muslims killed around the world.

According to the French press, the fatal victim was a tourist with dual German and Filipino nationality, stabbed in the back and shoulder on the emblematic Bir-Hakeim bridge over the Seine.

One of the injured, also according to the press, is an English tourist who was walking with his wife and son on Avenida Presidente Kennedy and who suffered blows to the head and was transported to the hospital; the other injured person is a French citizen in his sixties.

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