Rita Osakwe
A stabbing that left two people seriously injured in Paris is being treated as a terror attack.
French interior minister Gérald Darmanin said the attack near the former office of satirical magazine Charlie Hebdo was “clearly an act of Islamist terrorism”.
“It’s the street where Charlie Hebdo used to be,” Darmanin said in an interview with broadcaster France 2. “This is the way the Islamist terrorists operate.”
He described the stabbing as “a new bloody attack against our country, against journalists.” H
Hesaid he had ordered law enforcement agents to beef up protection at all sites where Islamist attacks had taken place in the past, and at synagogues, where the city’s Jewish community this weekend mark the Yom Kippur holiday.
A man of Pakistani origin described as the main suspect was arrested near the scene. At least four other people have also been arrested.
Paris police said the victims, a man and a woman who worked at a TV production company – were seriously injured by a machete-type weapon. They were taken to hospital but their lives were not in danger.
The attack comes as a high-profile trial is under way of people accused of helping carry out the attack, in which 12 people were killed. Investigators said the militants at that time wanted to avenge the publication of cartoons depicting the Prophet Mohammad in the magazine. Charlie Hebdo republished the cartoons on the eve of the trial this month.