Three women were stabbed in central Paris on Monday by a man who allegedly told police he had been ‘sent by Allah’. The victims were aged between 19 and 36 and one of the women was pregnant. All three suffered serious wounds and are in a stable condition in hospital.
According to eyewitnesses, the assailant was heard to say ‘he had been sent by Allah to kill women’. One of those witnesses, a young man called Mohamed, used his judo skills to bring the attacker to the ground. The suspect was then restrained by police officers.
‘He wasn’t just wandering around aimlessly,’ Mohamed told reporters. ‘He was targeting women exclusively.’
France’s interior minister, Laurent Nunez, said the attacker had made ‘incoherent statements’ and he urged people not to jump to conclusions.
The incident occurred 48 hours after a woman was murdered in Berlin by an Islamist who also injured 29 people. The victim died when a 21-year-old German of Lebanese origin drove his car into a crowd celebrating the gay pride parade and then ran amok with a machete.
