Two young children stabbed by a man in the French mountain town of Annecy are fighting for their lives but are in stable condition, the government said, while sympathizers laid flowers at the playground where the attack took place.
A shocked nation paid tribute to a young man as he toured France’s cathedrals as he tried to hold off an attacker during his attack and then gave chase, reports RTE.
Four children aged 22 to 36 months and two pensioners were injured in the attack.
The two children are in a critical but stable condition, said Prime Minister Elisabeth Borne.
President Emmanuel Macron, who called the attack an “act of absolute cowardice”, visited a hospital in the nearby city of Grenoble, where three of the four are being treated, and met with their families, the Elysée Palace said, reports RTE.
French media dubbed the 24-year-old a “hero with a backpack”.
The student of management and philosophy introduced himself only as Henri.
“All I know is I was not there by chance,” he told the CNews television network. “It was unthinkable to do nothing … I followed my instincts and did what I could to protect the weak,” reports RTE.
His Facebook and Instagram accounts were flooded with messages thanking him for his courage.
“May God bless you … you did what you could at that moment, you did not give up, you did not run. You are an angel,” Instagram user Mag Capone wrote on his site, reports RTE.
French Interior Minister Gerald Darmanin said late last night that the suspect had no police records in France, was homeless and was questioned by police on Sunday while he was washing up in Lake Annecy.
Witnesses reported that the attacker, wearing a headscarf and sunglasses, was walking through a park on the shores of Lake Annecy, apparently attacking random people.
Armed police arrested him on the spot.
“He wanted to attack everyone. I moved away and he lunged at an old man and woman and stabbed the old man,” former professional footballer Anthony Le Tallec, who was running in the park, told the local Dauphine Libere newspaper, reports RTE.
France has witnessed a series of attacks over the past decade, most of them by Islamic extremists.
Recently, the beheading of a teacher in broad daylight near his school in the suburbs of Paris by a radicalized refugee from Chechnya sparked shock and sadness, as well as a national debate about the impact of radical Islam on poor areas.
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