Villeurbanne (AFP)

Scene of terror in Villeurbanne Saturday afternoon: a man armed with a knife and a barbecue fork attacked passersby at a subway exit, killing a 19-year-old and wounding eight others, including three were between life and death in the evening.

The alleged perpetrator of this aggression still unexplained motives was arrested and placed in custody for "assassination and attempted assassinations," told AFP the prosecutor of Lyon.

According to a police source, it would be an Afghan asylum seeker.

At this stage, the National Anti-Terrorist Prosecutor's Office (PNAT) has not been seized but is currently assessing the situation.

The authorities initially reported a second suspect on the run, but the prosecution and a police source later denied the existence of a second perpetrator.

- "Knives in every sense" -

The facts occurred around 16:30 at the Laurent Bonnevay metro station, located on the A line linking Lyon to Vaulx-en-Velin. Several other stations, in Villeurbanne and Vaulx-en-Velin la Soie, were no longer served on Saturday in the early evening.

"There was a man at the stop of 57 (a bus, ed) and who began to stab in all directions," testified to AFP a girl at the tank top stained with blood.

"He managed to touch, to open a person's belly, he stabbed a guy in the head, he opened his ear to a lady on the bus stop," he said. she reported sobs in her voice.

The people fled, took refuge where they could, in particular buses, making difficult the work of the relief, reported the firemen.

Of the wounded, three are in absolute urgency and five less seriously injured, according to the prosecution. In addition, 20 other shocked people were also taken care of by firefighters.

An AFP journalist saw a body packed in a body bag and loaded into an ambulance, traces of blood on the ground near the subway station around which a large security perimeter was in place.

The mayor of Lyon, Gérard Collomb, went quickly to the scene calling to "remain very cautious" on the terrorist character or not of this "knife attack", during a brief statement to the press on the spot.

Moreover, he claimed that the perpetrator of the "assault on people waiting for their bus in a busy place" and "sudden enough" had been "apparently under the control of both the people who were there, the security services of the TCL (transport network, ed), as he was heading to escape to the metro ".

- Parcel trapped in May -

In May, the explosion of a parcel bomb in the heart of Lyon had wounded 14 people and aroused strong emotion in the third city of France, until then spared by the wave of unprecedented jihadist attacks (251 deaths) that struck France since 2015.

In front of the investigators, he said he had "lent allegiance to his heart" to the Islamic State group (IS) and "admitted to have deposited" in front of a bakery in the center of Lyon "explosive device, he had previously made" , according to the Paris prosecutor's office.

© 2019 AFP