Second ‘Terror Attack’ Foiled in France on Hamas’s ‘Day of Jihad’

French President Emmanuel Macron visited a school where a teacher had been killed by a radical Islamist with a knife on Friday, revealing a second suspected attack had been foiled at another school the same day.

Emmanuel Macron spoke to the public and press at the Gambetta Secondary School in Arras near the Belgian border where a teacher had been killed and two others injured by an “Allahu Akbar” shouting knifeman on Friday, and revealed in his speech another attack was thought to have been foiled.

Speaking of the terror threat, the President said: “at least one another intervention may have made it possible to thwart another attempted attack in another region”, with French newspaper Le Figaro reporting this referred to an arrest near Paris.

The publication states a man left a “prayer room” in the town of Limay, in Yvelines in the Île-de-France region northwest of Paris while carrying a kitchen knife and was arrested by Condorcet High School. Per the report, the man’s exact intentions for carrying a knife from the place of prayer to a school are not yet known but the individual is already known to police for having been radicalised.

BFM reports the individual was a 23-year-old male and justified his carrying a blade to officers by claiming he was homeless and frequently attacked, so the article was for self-defence. Police continue to investigate, the publication states.

Also known to police for radicalisation is Chechnyan alleged Islamist Mohamed Mogouchkov, who was on the French state’s “S file” database of extremists and who killed a literature teacher Dominique Bernard at the Arras school where Macron was speaking. Mogouchkov as well as members of his family have been arrested.

Macron revealed the others who were stabbed but not killed by Mogouchkov are nevertheless in critical condition. Earlier reports stated all three had been stabbed in their necks, and one had their carotid artery cut.

The President called the attacks “barbaric” and noted, as many others had done, that today’s attacks come nearly three years to the day since teacher Samuel Paty was beheaded at his school, again by a radical Islamist from Chechnya.

While it is not clear whether today’s attack is related in any way to Hamas declaring a global “day of Jihad“, it has already been reported that several Jewish faith schools in Western cities have taken the decision not to open for the rest of the week, advising their pupils to stay at home for their own safety.