As violent crime continues to surge across France, it is estimated that as many as 120 knife attacks occur on average per day across the country.
The figures, which come from the National Observatory of Delinquency and Criminal Responses (ONDRP), claim that between 2015 and 2017 there were around 44,000 victims of knife crime each year, or an average of 120 per day.
On average, 118,000 people in France say they were victims of some sort of violent crime involving an attacker who they were not living with such as assaults in public areas, schools, nightclubs, and other venues, Le Figaro reports.
Knives are the most common weapons reported in violent crime cases, followed by 34 per cent who say they were attacked with a blunt object or rock, and around nine per cent who were attacked with a firearm.
In cases of fatal violence, the trend remains largely the same, with edged weapons seen in 34 per cent of cases, followed by firearms at 28 per cent.
Murders and attempted murders have seen a staggering increase in France in the last decade with 3,168 cases in 2018, compared to 1,767 in 2009.
“Violence is [spreading]. Law enforcement is no longer scary. Today, for nothing, for a look, it turns to fists. Pulling out a gun has become commonplace,” Frédéric Lagache of the police union Alliance Police Nationale said in September.
According to a senior Paris police official, stabbings were a common occurrence at makeshift migrant camps in the north of the city.
“There were many fights in the migrant camps, between Afghans, Eritreans and Somalis in particular, which ended with stabbings, in the north of Paris. The dismantling of these fixing points has been beneficial,” the official said.
The makeshift migrant camps had become so dangerous in recent years that the aid group Solidarité Migrants Wilson shut down their operations due to the threat posed to their workers in 2018.
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