Two adults and four young children have been injured in a knife attack in the south-eastern French town of Annecy, authorities said on Thursday.
Several of the victims are reported to be in critical condition.
A suspect has been arrested and is being questioned, Gérald Darmanin, France’s interior minister, wrote on Twitter.
The suspect has been identified as a Syrian asylum seeker who had been granted refugee status in Sweden, according to a source close to the investigation. The individual was not known to French intelligence services.
The suspect, who entered France legally, had been resident in Sweden for a decade, the source said. He had filed a second asylum application in France in November last year in which he identified himself as a “Christian from Syria”, the source added, and he had a cross on his person at the time of the arrest.
French prime minister Élisabeth Borne and Darmanin have arrived in Annecy. The authorities have yet to make a statement on a possible motive for the attack.
Emmanuel Macron, France’s president, called it an act of “absolute cowardice”.
“Children and an adult are between life and death,” Macron wrote on Twitter. “The nation is in shock.”
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