Four children were seriously injured in the knife attack in Annecy on Thursday, June 8. Two of them as well as an adult have their vital prognoses engaged. In total, the attack caused six casualties. The assailant was arrested, but his motives are still unknown.
Around 9:45 a.m. on Thursday June 8, an individual attacked at least several children aged around 3 and an adult with a knife, in the playground of a park near Lake Annecy, in Haute- Savoy. The man was quickly arrested four minutes after the start of the attack. The assault occurred in the Jardin d’Europe, a very popular place in the city. BFM TV claims that several classes were present at the time of the events.
According to the latest report announced by the prefecture of Haute-Savoie, six people were injured: four children aged 22 months to 3 years and two adults. The adult victims are a 70-year-old man who was stabbed and shot and, presumably, the assailant on whom the police opened fire. Two children and the elderly person have their vital prognoses engaged. Several victims were transferred to hospitals, including the Annecy Genevois hospital center, the Grenoble hospital center and the Geneva hospital center.
The author of the knife attack would be a 31 or 32 year old man, born in 1991 according to the Dauphiné Libéré. Le Parisien affirms that he is an individual of Syrian nationality who had submitted his asylum application to the Ofpra on November 28, 2022. In the meantime, he had obtained refugee status in Sweden by a decision of 26 April 2023. The man is married to a Swedish woman and father of a child with his partner. Given his refugee status, he is on French territory in a regular situation.
At the time of the attack, the man was wearing a turban, wearing dark glasses and dressed in black. But the only religious sign found on the man is a Christian cross. The individual is said to have declared himself to be a “Christian from Syria” when applying for asylum. He was quickly overpowered and arrested by law enforcement at the scene. At this time, the circumstances and motivations behind this attack remain unclear. The track of a terrorist attack is neither favored nor dismissed and the national anti-terrorist prosecutor’s office (Pnat) has not been seized.
At the time of the attack, the assailant was “obviously” targeting the children according to witnesses at the scene, interviewed by France Bleu. Other testimonies describe the individual as a marginal man who “wandered for several days around the lake”, even several months. He is said to live on the streets and was seen bathing in the lake.
