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Investigators at the scene of the crime in Annecy: act of violence in the children's playground

Photo: JEAN-CHRISTOPHE BOTT / EPA

Four infants and two adults were injured in a knife attack in France. At least two of the children and one adult had suffered life-threatening injuries, according to the news agencies Reuters and dpa, citing investigators. The AP news agency, on the other hand, writes that all four children were critically injured.

The injured children are between 22 months and three years old, according to the prosecutor's office. Two of them are said to be children of tourists from Great Britain and the Netherlands.

A video is circulating on social networks purporting to show the attack in the morning in a park in the eastern French city of Annecy. Among other things, it shows a man running across a children's playground, pushing a woman to the side and stabbing a child in a stroller.

Investigation into attempted murder

The alleged attacker was arrested. French Prime Minister Élisabeth Borne said he was a 31-year-old Syrian national. He was granted asylum in Sweden ten years ago. A later asylum application in France was rejected on the grounds that Sweden had already approved an asylum application, she said.

The background to the crime is still unclear. So far, there is no evidence of a terrorist motive for the attack, said the prosecutor of Annecy, Line Bonnet-Mathis. The man was neither known to the secret services nor were there any indications of a psychiatric history. The alleged perpetrator is being investigated for attempted murder.

According to media reports, the man was married to a woman in Sweden and had a three-year-old child – his wife and he had recently separated.

"Shocked by this inhuman and despicable act"

Head of state Emmanuel Macron was dismayed: "The nation is in shock," he wrote on Twitter. The attack was "absolutely cowardly." Our thoughts accompany them and their families, as well as the rescue workers who have been deployed."

German Chancellor Olaf Scholz (SPD) also commented on the act on Twitter. "Dear Emmanuel Macron, our thoughts are with the victims, their families and the entire French people, Germany is shocked by this inhuman and despicable act," he wrote in German and French.

bbr/Reuters/AP/dpa/AFP