An Afghan asylum seeker was brutally stabbed on Sunday in Paris’s Gare du Nord railway station, with the aftermath of the bloody attack caught on video and posted to social media.
The attack took place at around 5 pm and saw the victim, an Afghan asylum seeker born in 1988, stabbed in the neck as he was sitting on a bench waiting for his train.
According to a report from French newspaper Le Parisien, the attacker wandered around the station before approaching the asylum seeker and stabbing him. Investigators have not revealed the identity of the assailant or a possible motive, with authorities still searching for the suspect.
The Afghan was later taken to hospital and treated for life-threatening injuries, but has reportedly stabilised and is recovering.
According to newspaper Liberation, a witness stated the attacker may come from an Asian background but said they could not be sure as he was wearing a mask at the time.
“An Afghan, a migrant, was slit by an Asian man, but it was not clear because he had a mask. No, we didn’t know if they knew each other,” a rail passenger is alleged to have said, conflicting with the description of the attacker being “European” by Le Parisien.
The attack is just the latest random act of extreme violence to take place in Paris in recent years. In 2018, six people were stabbed at random in the heavily migrant-populated 18th arrondissement in the northern part of the city. The man believed to be behind the attacks was later found by police, intoxicated and covered in blood in the doorway of a building.
A report from that year claimed that France sees as many as 777 random acts of violence per day that are not motivated by theft or other factors.