- Attacker lunged at soldier and tried to stab him at Chatelet metro station
- Armed police arrested him at around 6.30am and victim was not injured
A knife wielding man has attacked a French soldier outside a Metro station in Paris today while praising Allah.
The attacker approached the soldier from behind and then lunged at him with the blade at Chatelet metro station at 6.30am this morning.
The victim managed to wrestle him to the ground and he was arrested by armed police as he shouted ISIS slogans.
The attacker approached the soldier from behind and then lunged at him with the blade at Chatelet metro station (file picture) at 6.30am this morning while praising Allah
The unidentified man is said to have rushed at a patrol of soldiers wearing combat uniforms and brandishing assault rifles.
‘He was restrained, and nobody was injured,’ said a source investigating the case on Friday morning.
The man was taken to the main Chateletpolice station, and now faces a range of terrorist charges.
It is the latest in a long string ofattacks on service personnel involved in Operation Sentinelle – an initiative involving 10,000 soldiers and 4700 gendarmes and police.
They were first deployed in November 2015 following a single night of violence by Islamic State suicide bombers that saw 130 people murdered in the French capital.
The soldiers’ job is to protect vulnerable areas ofthe capital, including transport hubs such as Chatelet, which is used by thousands of commuters and tourists every day.
Pedestrians walk past the ‘Chatelet Les Halles’ metro station where a soldier was attacked by a knife-wielding man in the early hours of the morning
But many have complained that they are now easy targets themselves, with lone wolf attackers regularly trying to kill or wound them. In January six Sentinelle soldiers wereinjured when a car smashed into them close to the headquarters of France’s anti-terrorism police unit in the Paris suburb of Levallois-Perret.
Two of the infantrymen were seriouslywounded, while the attacker was later shot repeatedly following a manhunt and adramatic motorway chase.
A few days earlier there was an attempt tokill a soldier at the Eiffel Tower by a 19-year-old psychiatric patient whobrandished a knife and pledged allegiance to Isis.
In April, a 39-year-old police officer was shot dead by an Isis supporter on the Champs Elysee, while in February another knife attacker was gunned down in the Louvre Museum complex after attacking an army patrol.