VERSAILLES – A female police employee was stabbed to death by a Tunisian man at a police station southwest of Paris today, the local prosecutor’s office and a source told AFP.
The attacker was fatally wounded when an officer opened fire on him at the station in Rambouillet, a wealthy commuter town about 60km from the French capital, said the police source on condition of anonymity.
The attack took place in the secure entrance area of the station around 2.20pm (1220 GMT), said the source.
The woman, 48, was stabbed in the throat twice.
Prime Minister Jean Castex and Interior Minister Gerald Darmanin both announced that they are heading to the scene.
The assailant was aged 36 and unknown to security services, sources close to the investigation told AFP.
France has faced a series of attacks blamed on Islamist radicals in recent years that have cost the lives of hundreds of people.
Several assaults over the last year have reignited concerns about the spread of radical Islam in the country, as well as immigration.
Last September, a Pakistani man wounded two people with a meat cleaver outside the former offices of satirical magazine Charlie Hebdo, which had printed cartoons of Prophet Muhammad.
On October 16, a young Chechen refugee beheaded teacher Samuel Paty, who had shown some of the caricatures to his pupils.
And on October 29, three people were killed when a recently arrived Tunisian went on a stabbing spree in a church in the Mediterranean city of Nice.
These came after attacks carried out by Islamist extremists from 2015 that began with the massacre of staff at the Charlie Hebdo offices in January that year.
In France’s deadliest peacetime atrocity, 130 people were killed and 350 wounded when suicide bombers and gunmen attacked the Stade de France stadium, bars and restaurants in central Paris, and the Bataclan concert hall in November 2015.
In 2016, a man rammed a truck into a Bastille Day crowd in Nice, killing 86 people.
President Emmanuel Macron’s government has introduced legislation to tackle radical Islamist activity in the country, a bill that has stirred anger in some Muslim countries. – AFP, April 23, 2021
