A soldier was injured and a suspect was in serious condition Friday in Paris after an attack French Prime Minister Bernard Cazeneuve called “terrorist in nature.” The suspect, who has not been named by the police, was identified as a 29-year-old man from Egypt hours after he was shot while storming the legendary Louvre museum with a machete, franceinfo reported.
The suspect rushed toward a crowd of guards shouting “Allahu akbar,” an Arabic term for “God is great,” at about 10 a.m. local time, the Local reported. He had two backpacks and two weapons but no explosives. As the suspect approached, a soldier opened fire, hitting him in the stomach and head.
The suspect was taken to the hospital. He did not have identity papers on him, CNN reported, though as the day wore on, photos of the incident leaked on social media.
Prosecutor François Molins said at a Friday night news conference the suspect’s name had not been “formally established.” Other authorities revealed they were working to figure out whether he’d acted alone.
“We are dealing with an attack from an individual who was clearly aggressive and represented a direct threat, and whose comments lead us to believe that he wished to carry out a terrorist incident,” the head of Paris’ police, Michel Cadot, told reporters. “There was also a second individual who was behaving suspiciously, who has also been detained, but for now there does not appear to be a link between that individual and the attack.”
Much of France remained on high alert Friday, as it has since the November 2015 Paris attacks, in which Islamic State group fighters killed more than 130 people with explosions and bombs, and the July 2016 Nice killings, in which more than 80 people at a Bastille Day celebration died after being run over by a truck.
United States President Donald Trump, who recently enacted a travel ban for people coming from certain Muslim majority countries over security concerns, referenced the fact that France was “on edge again” in a Tweet Friday morning about the Louvre shooting. “A new radical Islamic terrorist has just attacked in Louvre Museum in Paris. Tourists were locked down,” he wrote. “GET SMART U.S.”
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