Paris police reported having neutralized a man wielding a machete and shouting “Allahu akbar” outside the Louvre Museum. Apparently, the man had assaulted a Parisian soldier, which led him to shoot the attacker five times, wounding him severely.
Reports reveal that the man started his rampage after soldiers denied him entrance to the Carrousel du Louvre, the underground shopping mall beneath the Louvre, as he was carrying suspicious-looking bags. After the denial, the man of Egyptian descent tried to stab one of the soldiers. Authorities found two other machetes on him. A second person was arrested but without confirmed correlation to the event.
The Islamic State remains strong and operative
According to Interior Ministry spokesman Pierre-Henry Brandet, at least 1,000 people were secured in the museum during the incident. Police Chief Michel Cadot recognized that the man had shouted the Arabic chant for “God is great” during the attack, which occurred at 10:00 a.m. local time.
Currently, a total of 3,500 soldiers are on patrol protecting the city of Paris in the wake of recent terrorist acts. Security is at its highest value, seeing that the attack occurred just hours before the officials behind Paris’ intentions of hosting the 2024 Olympics met to deliberate near the Eiffel Tower.
Regarding the attack, Mayor Anne Hidalgo announced that she would still attend the ceremony and that “there is not a single one escaping that menace,” referring to the world’s most emblematic cities being threatened by terrorism.
President Trump was quick to react, writing on Twitter the following: “A new radical Islamic terrorist has just attacked in Louvre Museum in Paris. Tourists were locked down. France on edge again. GET SMART U.S.”
Around 12:30 p.m. staff returned to the museum and roadblocks were removed from the area.
France as a whole has been in a state of emergency since 2015, when three suicide bombers detonated themselves outside the Stade de France during soccer match, followed by a shooting during an Eagles of Death Metal concert in the Bataclan theater.
The attack resulted in the death of 130 people and 368 cases of injury. The attacks were the deadliest to ever occur in France since World War II. The event put the country in a state of emergency, after being put on high alert after the attack on the offices of satirical magazine Charlie Hebdo.
The reason behind the attacks was to be retaliation from the Islamic State against the bombings staged on Syria and Iraq by the French air force. Most of the attackers were either French or Belgian, while two of them were Iraqis. All of them had participated in the Syrian Civil War, and many were determined to have entered the country posing as migrants or refugees.
Source: The Washington Post