2023-06-08 18:43:33
This Thursday, June 8, Annecy was the scene of a violent knife attack. Six people, including four young children, were injured on a playground in the large park bordering the lake. The vital prognosis is engaged for two children and an adult. For the time being, there is “no apparent terrorist motive”, according to the public prosecutor of Annecy.
What happened ?
The man attacked around 9:45 a.m. children aged around three who were near the Jardin de l’Europe, a very busy park on the shores of Lake Annecy.
According to various testimonies, the man then tried to flee from the playground and attacked an elderly person before being arrested very quickly by the police. “He wanted to attack everyone. I got out of the way and he went straight for a grandpa and a grandma, and he stabs the grandpa,” confided to the Dauphine Libere former Liverpool and Auxerre player Anthony Le Tallec, who witnessed the attack.
“It was a little unreal […] he was shouting, it was not necessarily understandable what he was saying. He preyed on babies […] he fled, the police arrived. They tried to stop him at first without opening fire, when he understood that he was trapped he attacked an elderly person and there they shot him in the legs”, for his part testified Malo, a passerby joined by BFMTV who was near the playing area.
The victims were transferred to the Annecy Genevois hospital center and the witnesses were taken to a building near the scene of the tragedy, the surroundings of which were cordoned off by a large police force.
Who is the aggressor?
According to a security source interviewed by L’Express, the assailant is called Abdalmasih H. He was born in 1991 and is 32 years old. He is “of Syrian nationality” and “had been living in Sweden since 2013”, where he obtained refugee status, a residence permit valid “until 2025”. He is married to a Swedish woman and has one child, of Swedish nationality. The obtaining of his Swedish residence permit took place “prior to his application” for asylum in France. This was introduced on November 28, 2022 at Ofpra, and refused on April 26, 2023. He received a notification at the beginning of June, which gave him one month to appeal to the National Court for the Right of Asylum (CNDA ). Before this deadline, it was not possible to present him with an Obligation to leave France (OQTF), to Sweden.
Abdalmasih H. is unknown to all files, we learned from a police source. According to this same security source, the attacker “declared himself a Christian from Syria” in his asylum application file in France. He had a Christian cross on him at the time. According to a video seen by AFP, the author said “in the name of Jesus Christ” twice in English at the time of the attack.
The aggressor, “a political refugee who would be homeless, arrived in Annecy in the fall of 2022” was “neither under the influence of narcotics nor under the influence of alcohol”, declared the prosecutor of Annecy Line Bonnet-Mathis during a press briefing at the end of the day.
“As it stands, we have no elements that could lead us to believe that there is a terrorist motivation,” she said earlier in the afternoon. “We are trying to understand his motive”, she said at the end of the day, “I cannot rule out a senseless act at this stage”. An investigation was opened for attempted murder.
The author of the attack “is not known to any intelligence service” and has no “identified psychiatric history”, said Prime Minister Elisabeth Borne in the afternoon. .
Who are the victims ?
A young Briton and a young Dutchman are among the four young children who were injured, we learned from the Annecy prosecutor.
The youngest of the injured children is 22 months old and the oldest 3 years old. Two of them are life-threatening, according to a source familiar with the matter.
“A heinous, unspeakable act”, according to Borne
“We are shocked by this heinous, unspeakable act,” said Elisabeth Borne in Annecy after the knife attack. “The investigation will make it possible to specify both the route, the profile of this assailant and naturally all the light will have to be shed. But today is the time of emotion, and we are here with the Minister of the Interior alongside the inhabitants of Annecy to express all the support and all the solidarity of the nation”, declared the Prime Minister to the press in front of the prefecture of Haute-Savoie, a few hundred meters from the place of the assault.
Emmanuel Macron denounced at the end of the morning an “attack of absolute cowardice” in Annecy. “The Nation is in shock,” said the head of state on Twitter. “Our thoughts are with them as well as their families and the rescue services mobilized,” he added.
Interior Minister Gérald Darmanin posted a tweet “Several people including children were injured by an individual armed with a knife in a square in Annecy. The individual was arrested thanks to the very rapid intervention of the police”.
Deputies and members of the government observed Thursday morning a minute of silence in the National Assembly after this attack. President Yaël Braun-Pivet invited this minute of silence “for them, for their families”, after this “serious attack”.
“Appalling attack this morning on the Pâquier in Annecy. All my thoughts to the victims and the families”, tweeted the mayor François Astorg asking the public “to avoid the Pâquier sector for the smooth running of the operations”.
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