A man attacked three women with knives in Paris before bystanders pinned him to the ground and an off-duty police officer detained him, the French interior minister, Laurent Nuñez, has said.
The man attacked the three women, aged 19, 24 and 36, with two kitchen knives, severely wounding two of them, near Porte de Clichy on Monday, Nuñez said.
A video shared on Snapchat and verified by Reuters showed a man with long black hair and wearing a cream tracksuit wielding one big knife in each hand and attempting to attack and stab a young woman. It was unclear if the woman was injured.
Mohamed-Ali Bouhadjar, 26, who filmed the video and posted it on Snapchat, told Reuters: “When I saw him stab a woman in the back, I started shouting: ‘Come on, let’s stop him.’ Several people stepped in.
“One person threw a suitcase at him. He dropped the knives. At that moment I grabbed him, swept his legs out from under him, and we pinned him to the ground.”
Another part of the video shows the same man in a tracksuit lying on the ground immobilised by bystanders, while the two knives are seen lying nearby on a pedestrian crossing.
“It is Allah who commanded me,” the man lying on the floor says in the video.
Nuñez said the man was detained by an off-duty police officer. “I pay tribute to him, it was a courageous act,” he added.
Nuñez said earlier that the motive for the attack was unknown and police could not verify the identity of the attacker, whose declarations were “incoherent” while he was being arrested.
The French national anti-terrorist prosecutor’s office said it was considering whether to open an investigation.
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