Two female police officers in the French commune of Cherbourg-en-Cotentin were attacked and wounded this week by a Senegalese migrant man armed with a sword.
The incident took place on Thursday afternoon and saw the Senegalese national, identified as 36-year-old Papa M’B., steal a vehicle while brandishing a sword, only to crash the it a short time later.
When police arrived on the scene at around 3:40 p.m., the 36-year-old was hiding behind the vehicle and ambushed the officers with the sword, which has been described as looking like a Japanese katana, newspaper Valeurs Actuelles reports.
In response, a third officer fired five shots at the migrant, three of which struck the 36-year-old in the abdomen, torso and shoulder. The two officers received non-life-threatening injures, including a cut to the chin of one officer and a head wound that required seven stitches.
“He threw himself on the policewomen with a sword and wounded them in the face,” Cherbourg public prosecutor Yves Le Clair said.
The Senegalese man, meanwhile, was rushed to a local hospital in critical condition by emergency helicopter. While no terrorist motive was suggested by French investigators, the man is allegedly well-known to local police and had been walking around with a sword earlier in the week on Monday while dressed all in black.
The attack on the female officers comes just days after an off-duty policeman in Paris was violently attacked and stabbed while out on the street with his girlfriend.
The four attackers, who were described as “African-type individuals,” allegedly confronted the officer and then proceeded to stab him in the abdomen. As of Monday, the 29-year-old officer was no longer in critical condition. Only one of the four suspects had been taken into custody.
The two incidents this week are part of a trend of attacks on French police, a phenomenon that has been increasing in recent years. A report from February noted that, in the last two decades, the number of attacks against police had doubled.