French Alpine town stabbing: Knife attacker injures several people, including children

View of Annecy, French Alps. Photo / AP

An attacker with a knife stabbed several young children and at least one adult, leaving some with life-threatening injuries, in a town in the French Alps before he was arrested, authorities said.

Interior Minster Gerald Darmanin said the attack took place in a square in the lakeside town of Annecy. In a short tweet, he said police have detained the attacker.

“Several people including children have been injured by an individual armed with a knife in a square in Annecy,” he tweeted.

Witnesses said some of the children appeared very young. A man who spoke to broadcaster BFMTV said he saw first-aiders working on “little bodies, 3 or 4 years old, perhaps.”

A local politician, Antoine Armand, said the children were attacked on a playground. Speaking to BFMTV from the National Assembly building in Paris, he said the victims included “very young” children and that they were “savagely attacked”. The attack took place close to a primary school, he said.

National police and an Interior Ministry official who spoke on condition of anonymity because he wasn’t authorised to speak about the developing situation both said that four children were among the wounded.

Police said two of the children suffered life-threatening injuries and that the other two were lightly injured.

Police said one adult also suffered life-threatening wounds.

Both police and the Interior Ministry official cautioned that the number of wounded could evolve because the full details weren’t yet clear.

In Paris, politicians interrupted a debate to hold a moment of silence for the victims.

The assembly president, Yaël Braun-Pivet, said: “There are some very young children who are in critical condition and I invite you to respect a minute of silence for them, for their families, and so that, we hope, the consequences of this very grave attack do not lead to the nation grieving.”