The French president and Germany’s foreign affairs minister condemned Saturday’s knife attack in Paris that injured two and left a German national dead. Anti-terrorism prosecutors have opened an investigation into the assault.
Police arrested a 26-year-old Frenchman, who had been on the security services watchlist, soon after the attack Saturday night near the Eiffel Tower. Officials said the victim was with his wife when he was attacked and fatally stabbed on Quai de Grenelle.
“I send all my condolences to the family and loved ones of the German national who died this evening during the terrorist attack in Paris,” French President Emmanuel Macron said on X. “The national anti-terrorism prosecutor’s office … will be responsible for shedding light on this matter so that justice can be done in the name of the French people,” he said.
Emergency services treated the two injured, a French national and a foreign tourist, whose wounds are not life-threatening.
Following his arrest, the assailant told police he was distressed over how “many Muslims are dying in Afghanistan and in Palestine,” France’s interior minister, Gérald Darmanin, told reporters late Saturday. The suspect had served four years in jail for planning another attack in 2016.
“Shocking news from Paris,” German Foreign Minister Annalena Baerbock posted online. “My thoughts are with the friends and family of the young German who was killed in the suspected Islamist attack. Almost his entire life lay ahead of him,” she said. “Hate and terror have no place in Europe,” Baerbock said.
The two people injured in the incident were a Frenchman aged around 60 and a British tourist, the BBC reported. Neither was found to be in a life-threatening condition, it said.
Saturday’s incident comes less than two months after a similar incident in the northern French city of Arras. A teacher was slain and two people wounded in a knife attack at a school in Arras in mid-October.
