Several people wounded in Paris knife attack near ex-Charlie Hebdo offices

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https://nypost.com/2020/09/25/4-wounded-in-knife-attack-near-ex-charlie-hebdo-offices-in-paris/

Several people wounded in Paris knife attack near ex-Charlie Hebdo offices
By Yaron Steinbuch
September 25, 2020 | 7:29am | Updated

At least two people were wounded in a knife or axe attack Friday outside the former Paris office of the Charlie Hebdo satirical weekly — and a suspect has been arrested, according to reports.

One of the victims was badly injured but is expected to survive, a police source told Reuters.

The alleged attacker was detained on the steps of the Paris Bastille opera house, according to BFM TV and Le Figaro. He was not immediately identified.

His clothes were bloodstained and he was carrying a large knife when he was caught, the Guardian reported. A suspicious package found nearby died not contain any explosives, according to the news outlet.

One police source said a machete was found at the scene. Another police source said a meat cleaver was found there.

A second person was later detained in the attack, according to Agence France-Presse, which cited a judicial source. It was not immediately clear why the second person was being held.

France’s counterterrorism prosecutor’s office said it has opened an investigation into “attempted murder in relation with a terrorist enterprise,” according to an official at the prosecutor’s office.

“We are closely monitoring a possible terrorist attack near the office of Charlie Hebdo in Paris, France. There is no known nexus to New York City at this time,” the NYPD said in a tweet.

The victims are a man and a woman who work at Premières Lignes, a TV documentary company based in the same building as the weekly’s former offices, according to founder Pauel Moreira, who told BFM TV that the attacker fled to a subway station.

Moreira said a man “attacked two people who were in front of the building, didn’t enter the building, and who attacked them with an axe and who left.” He said the company had not received any threats.

An employee told Agence France-Presse: “Two colleagues were smoking cigarettes in the street. I heard screams. I went to the window and saw a colleague, bloodied, being chased by a man with a machete.”

Witness Kader Alfa told The Associated Press that he saw “a guy that was in his 30s or 40s with an axe in his hand who was walking behind a victim covered in blood.”

“I was in my office. I heard screams in the road. I looked out of the window and saw a woman who was lying on the floor and had taken a whack in the face from what was possibly a machete,” a witness told Europe 1 radio, according to Reuters.

Prime Minister Jean Castex earlier said four people had been attacked, but a police source later told Reuters the number of people wounded was two, one of them seriously.

The attack happened on Rue Nicolas Appert at the site of a memorial to the murdered journalists and cartoonists, the Local reported.

It was not immediately unclear what motivated the or whether it had any ties to Charlie Hebdo, which moved offices after it the 2015 attack by Islamic extremists Said and Cherif Kouachi who killed 12 people inside.
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French firefighters push a gurney carrying an injured person after a knife attack near the former offices of Charlie Hebdo.
Alain Jocard/AFP via Getty Images


A female cop was killed a day later, followed later by the killing of four men at a Jewish supermarket by gunman Amedy Coulibaly.

The 2015 attack was claimed by a branch of Al Qaeda.

The incident comes as 14 people who are accused of being accomplices in the Charlie Hebdo attacks are on trial in the French capital, with the widows of the attackers expected to testify Friday.

The court heard that the Charlie Hebdo attackers had sought to avenge the Prophet Mohammad, nearly a decade after the weekly published cartoons mocking him.

On Thursday, the trial was suspended for a day after one of the accused fell ill in the box, according to Agence France-Presse. The defendant, Nezar Mickael Pastor Alwatik, was expected to undergo medical tests including for the coronavirus, his lawyer said.
 
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