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| Car Slams Into Soldiers in Paris Suburb | Car Slams Into Soldiers in Paris Suburb |
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| PARIS — Six soldiers were injured in a Paris suburb on Wednesday when a car drove into them, the French authorities said, and the police were looking for the driver of the vehicle. | |
| The car, identified as a BMW, plowed into the soldiers outside a building they were using in Levallois-Perret, a northwestern suburb of Paris that is adjacent to the city, according to the Paris police. | |
| The authorities have not identified the episode as terrorism, but France has been on a constant alert for more than two years. About 7,000 soldiers are currently on patrol around the country as part of the response to the terrorist threat and to a series of attacks that started in 2015. | |
| The most serious attacks were a shooting at the satirical magazine Charlie Hebdo and a siege at a kosher supermarket in January 2015, a series of coordinated attacks in the Paris area later that year that killed 130, and a deadly assault by a man who drove a truck through a crowd of people celebrating Bastille Day in Nice last summer that left 86 dead. | |
| Two of the six soldiers in Levallois-Perret were wounded more seriously than the others, but none of the injuries appeared to be life-threatening, the Paris police said. | |
| On its Twitter account, the police prefecture said that operations were continuing in the area and that the authorities were looking for the vehicle and the driver. | On its Twitter account, the police prefecture said that operations were continuing in the area and that the authorities were looking for the vehicle and the driver. |
| Patrick Balkany, the mayor of Levallois-Perret, told the news channel BFM-TV that the attack, which he called a “despicable aggression,” appeared to have intentionally targeted the soldiers as they were getting ready to start their patrol. | |
| “There was a BMW car that was pre-positioned in the alley and that charged into them as they were about to reach their vehicle,” Mr. Balkany told the news channel. | “There was a BMW car that was pre-positioned in the alley and that charged into them as they were about to reach their vehicle,” Mr. Balkany told the news channel. |
| The events in Levallois-Perret came just days after a 19-year-old man with psychiatric problems attempted to attack security forces with a knife at the Eiffel Tower. | |
| The man, who was on authorized leave from a psychiatric hospital and was readmitted on Tuesday, told the police after his arrest that he had wanted to attack a soldier. | |
| In an interview with the weekly Journal du Dimanche published last week, the interior minister, Gérard Collomb, said that the threat level in France was still high and that the authorities had thwarted seven terrorist plots since the beginning of the year. | |
| Asked about French jihadists returning from Islamic State territory in Syria and Iraq, Mr. Collomb told the newspaper that authorities were dealing with 217 adults and 54 minors who had returned to France so far, adding that “many of them are currently incarcerated.” | |
| “But other threats exist,” Mr. Collomb said. “Individuals who could be remotely controlled from abroad, for instance by Al Qaeda. Or people without direct links to Syria, but who are subjected to propaganda that unfortunately is still very active. People who are fragile psychologically, and who can suddenly take action.” |