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International desk: Seven people including two British tourists were wounded Sunday in Paris after they were attacked by a man armed with a knife and an iron bar, according to police and other sources.<\/p>\nInternational desk: Seven people including two British tourists were wounded Sunday in Paris after they were attacked by a man armed with a knife and an iron bar, according to police and other sources.<\/p>\n
A source close to the inquiry said the suspect, believed to be an Afghan\u00a0national, has been arrested, reports AFP.<\/p>\n
\u201cNothing at this stage shows signs of a terrorist nature in these assaults,\u201d the source said, adding that the attacker had targeted \u201cstrangers
\nin the street\u201d. Of the seven wounded, four are in a critical condition, police said.<\/p>\n
The incident took place just after 11:00pm (2100 GMT) on the banks of a canal in the northeast of the capital.<\/p>\n
A security guard at one of two cinemas on either side of the Bassin de la Villette, part of the Canal de l\u2019Ourcq, said he saw a man who had already assaulted people being chased by two other men who tried to stop him.<\/p>\n
\u201cHe had an iron bar in his hand which he threw at the men chasing him, then he took out a knife,\u201d he told AFP.<\/p>\n
Another eyewitness, 28-year-old Youssef Najah, said he was walking along the canal near a bowling green when he saw a man running and holding a knife about 25-30 cm (10-11 inches) long.<\/p>\n
\u201cThere were around 20 people chasing him. They started throwing Petanque balls at him,\u201d Najah said, referring to the sport popular in France also known as boules.<\/p>\n
\u201cAround four or five balls hit him in the head, but they weren\u2019t able to stop him,\u201d he added.<\/p>\n
According to the same witness, the attacker then dived into an alleyway, where the man \u201ctried to hide behind two British tourists. We said to them: \u2018Watch out, he has a knife\u201d. But they didn\u2019t react\u201d.<\/p>\n
The pair were then attacked, he said.<\/p>\n
\u2013 High alert \u2013<\/p>\n
A police investigation has been launched for attempted murder, according to a judicial source.<\/p>\n
It is the latest of several knife attacks France has seen in recent months, with terrorism being ruled out in most cases.<\/p>\n
On August 23, a man stabbed his mother and sister to death and seriously injured another person in a town near Paris before being shot dead by police. The motive for the violence remained unclear despite a claim by the Islamic<\/p>\n
State (IS) group that it was an attack by one of its fighters responding to the terror organisation\u2019s propaganda.<\/p>\n
Authorities said the 36-year-old had serious mental health problems and had been on a terror watch list since 2016. That attack came days after an Afghan asylum-seeker was arrested in town of Perigueux for a drunken rampage with a knife in which four people were wounded, one seriously.<\/p>\n
Police said investigators had \u201cvery quickly\u201d dismissed a terrorist motive after the August 13 incident. And on June 17, two people were hurt in another southern town when a woman shouting \u201cAllahu akbar\u201d (God is greatest) attacked them in a supermarket with a boxcutter knife.<\/p>\n
France has been on high alert following a string of jihadist attacks in recent years, often by people who have become radicalised or claim to have acted in the name of the IS group.<\/p>\n
More than 240 people have been killed by Islamic extremists since a massacre at the Charlie Hebdo satirical magazine in Paris in January 2015.<\/p>\n","protected":false},"excerpt":{"rendered":"
International desk: Seven people including two British tourists were wounded Sunday in Paris after they were attacked by a man armed with a knife and an iron bar, according to police and other sources. A source close to the inquiry said the suspect, believed to be an Afghan\u00a0national, has been arrested, reports AFP. \u201cNothing at […]<\/p>\n","protected":false},"author":7,"featured_media":47192,"comment_status":"open","ping_status":"open","sticky":false,"template":"","format":"standard","meta":[],"categories":[2,14],"tags":[],"yoast_head":"\n\n\n\n\n\n\n\n\n\n\n\n\t\n\t\n\n\n\t\n