Police in Paris have arrested a suspected Libyan national Wednesday after allegedly stabbing six people at the Gare du Nord railway station, with some witnesses claiming the man yelled “Allahu Akbar” at the time.
The 31-year-old, who initially claimed to be Algerian but investigators believe may be from Libya, allegedly carried out the mass stabbing attack at around 6:45 am on Wednesday morning in the 10th arrondissement of Paris, at a peak time for travel.
Witnesses claim that during the attack the 31-year-old, identified as Mohammed Amine M., yelled “Allahu Akbar”, a commonly used phrase by Islamist terrorists and other radical Islamic attackers that is typically translated in the West as “God is great”. Yet, a more accurate translation would be “Allah is greater,” or “Allah is greater than your God or government.”
Despite the witness accounts, local police say they are still looking to confirm whether or not the phrase was yelled by the migrant, broadcaster Europe1 reports.
The Paris prosecutor’s office has stated that of the six people stabbed, five were only lightly wounded, while the sixth victim is said to have been seriously injured as a result of the attack.
According to investigators, the man, who was initially thought to be Algerian, is likely from Libya and gave false information following his arrest. While police believe he may be from Libya, his fingerprints returned matches for five different identities.
Police suspect that the man was also given an order to leave French territory in September of last year but deportation would have been impossible to carry out as France does not deport people to Libya. Due to the large number of identities, the man’s exact identity may never be known with 100 per cent accuracy.
French Interior Minister Gerald Darmanin gave a press conference on the attack, saying that the police officer who subdued the attacker shot at him three times and the weapon used was not a knife but a “threatening weapon” and said the officers involved had been in civilian clothes, rather than uniformed officials, and were off duty at the time.
“An individual injured several people this morning at the Gare du Nord. He was quickly neutralized. Thank you to the police for their effective and courageous response,” Minister Darmanin wrote on Twitter.
So far, despite witnesses claiming the man yelled “Allahu akbar” during the attack, the French National Anti-Terrorist Prosecutor’s Office (PNAT) has not been involved in the case so far.
The incident is just the latest involving a knifeman in a French railway station in recent years and comes after another case in 2021 at the Saint-Lazare station in Paris by a man also allegedly yelling “Allahu Akbar” and claiming that France is ruled by the Islamic State Terror group. The suspected radical Islamist was shot by police in the chest before he could carry out an attack.
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