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Fatal Knife Attack in French Town Under Lockdown 2 Killed in Knife Attack in French Town Under Lockdown
(about 3 hours later)
PARIS — A man wielding a knife attacked customers lined up outside a bakery in a town under lockdown south of the French city of Lyon on Saturday, killing two people and wounding several others, prosecutors said. PARIS — A knife-wielding man killed two people and wounded five others on Saturday morning in a town in southern France in the few shops open under a national lockdown to stem the coronavirus pandemic.
The antiterrorism prosecutor’s office said a suspect was arrested after the attack unfolded at 11 a.m. local time in a commercial street in the town of Romans-sur-Isere. The assailant randomly attacked bystanders on the street, starting by slitting the throat of a man in his 40s in front of his companion and his son in the center of the town of Romans-sur-Isère, just south of Lyon, according to the French news media.
Prosecutors did not identify the suspect, but said he had claimed to be Sudanese born in 1987. Local news reports said he was an asylum seeker. He then attacked two workers and a customer inside a tobacco store before heading to a butcher’s store.
The prosecutor’s office said it was evaluating whether the attack had been motivated by terrorism. A suspect was quickly placed under arrest, and investigators were trying to establish the motive behind the attacks, France’s minister of interior, Christophe Castaner, said in a tweet.
French news reports said that at least seven other people had been wounded, with at least one in critical condition. “For now, we do not know the motive behind this attack,” the mayor’s office of Romans-sur-Isère said in a statement.
Mayor Marie-Hélène Thoraval told Reuters that the attack had taken place outside the bakery and at shops in the town center. Witnesses told Reuters the man had struck at random and in several places while moving around the town center. The suspect was a Sudanese asylum seeker in his 30s, who was not known to the authorities, according to the news media. He was not immediately identified.
It was not immediately clear if the attacks had any link to the lockdown. Interior Minister Christophe Castaner said security services were trying to establish the nature and circumstances of the stabbings. Mayor Marie-Hélène Thoraval told Reuters that the attack had taken place about 11 a.m. local time outside a bakery and other shops. Witnesses said he lunged at his victims, according to France Bleu.
Like the rest of France, the town’s residents are on a lockdown because of the coronavirus outbreak. The victims were most likely carrying out their weekend food shopping on the street, which is replete with bakeries and grocers. If officials conclude that the attack was a terrorist act, the country’s antiterrorism prosecutor’s office is expected to take over the investigation.
France has reported more than 83,000 cases of the virus, with over 6,500 deaths. During a visit to the town on Saturday afternoon, Mr. Castaner appeared to suggest that the authorities believed that the attack had been terrorist-related, saying that “a man undertook a terrorist path by killing two people.”
President Emmanuel Macron vowed that “light would be shed on this odious act which casts a shadow on our country, which has already been severely tested in recent weeks.”
The attack occurred on the 19th day of a nationwide lockdown to check the coronavirus outbreak, which has caused more than 83,000 cases and 6,500 deaths in France, including fatalities both in hospitals and retirement homes. France is the hardest-hit European nation after Italy and Spain.
The center of Romans-sur-Isère would almost certainly have had more people on a normal Saturday spring morning. Under the lockdown, people are allowed to leave their homes only in certain conditions and must fill out a form to justify their movements. Essential businesses — like supermarkets, bakeries an, butcher’s and cheese stores — remain open, but people must shop alone.
Because of the town’s proximity to Italy, the authorities have also imposed a curfew forbidding people from going outside between 9 p.m. and 6 a.m.
Last year, France recorded the highest number of asylum seekers in Europe, most of them from Afghanistan, Albania and sub-Saharan Africa. Many came to France seeking asylum after having had their application rejected in another country of the European Union.
With insufficient government housing, many asylum seekers, especially single men, are squatting in abandoned buildings in conditions made increasingly precarious by the global pandemic.