A man armed with a knife and shouting “Allahu Akbar”, listed for radicalism and under surveillance by French intelligence, killed a teacher and injured three people on Friday in a middle school in Arras, in the north of France.
In the evening, the government placed the country on “emergency attack” alert, with France fearing an importation of the conflict between Israel and Hamas.
The assailant, arrested by the police shortly after the incident, is called Mohammed Mogouchkov. Originally from the Russian Caucasus, he is around twenty years old, according to police sources. According to one of them, he is of Russian nationality, arriving in France in 2008.
Listed because of his potential danger to state security, he was under the surveillance of the French intelligence services (DGSI) and had been checked on Thursday, an intelligence source told AFP.
He “was under surveillance and was subject to physical surveillance”, “since this summer”, specified the same source, adding that “his telephone conversations had not revealed, in recent days, any elements allowing ‘announce a move to action’.
One of his brothers had “been arrested in the summer of 2019 by the DGSI as part of a foiled attack plan and subsequent acts of apology and was imprisoned”, according to this source.
The killed teacher received a stab wound to the throat and chest, according to the police.
“Uniting” against “barbarism”
President Emmanuel Macron, speaking in the courtyard of the establishment where the attack took place, called on the French to remain “united” and “to stand together” in the face of “the barbarity of Islamist terrorism”.
Prime Minister Élisabeth Borne “decided to raise the Vigipirate posture to the emergency attack level”, the highest level of this security system, indicated her services after a security meeting in the evening at the Élysée around the President Macron.
“There is a link between what undoubtedly happened in the Middle East and the act” of the attacker, the Minister of the Interior, Gérald, also declared on television. Darmanin.
In France, “there is no clear threat, there is an extremely negative atmosphere, particularly due to the call for action,” he added.
Among the injured were a security guard who suffered several stab wounds, and a teacher. According to a source close to the case, the security agent is “very seriously injured, between life and death”.
No students were injured.
Three years after Samuel Paty
Emmanuel Macron, who stood in front of the body of the killed teacher, clarified that he had intervened and had “no doubt saved many lives himself”.
The head of state also specified that another “attempted attack”, “in another region”, had been foiled. A reference, according to the Ministry of the Interior, to the arrest for carrying a prohibited weapon in Yvelines, in the Paris region, of a man known for “radicalization” after leaving a prayer room.
The Arras attack comes three years almost to the day after the assassination of Samuel Paty, a 47-year-old teacher who was beheaded on October 16, 2020 near his college in the Paris region, around ten days after showing his students caricatures of Muhammad during classes on freedom of expression. At the time, the 18-year-old attacker, a Russian refugee of Chechen origin, was killed by police.
The brother of Mohammed Mogouchkov, aged 17, was arrested near another establishment, without being in possession of a weapon. Several family members were arrested for the purposes of the investigation.
A total of eight people were in custody Friday evening in the investigation into the attack, a police source said. The national anti-terrorism prosecution announced that it had opened an investigation.
A large security perimeter was set up around the establishment, where students and staff were confined.
“We barricaded ourselves”
A philosophy teacher who witnessed the attack described a panic during intercourse, when the middle school students found themselves facing an armed man.
“He attacked canteen staff, I wanted to go down to intervene, he turned to me, chased me and asked me if I was a history and geography teacher,” he said. -he adds.
“We barricaded ourselves, then the police arrived and immobilized him. »
According to him, the victim is a French teacher at the college, information confirmed to AFP by the general secretary of Snes-FSU, a teachers’ union.
Two other unions told AFP that the attacker was “a former student”.
Videos circulating on social media showed a young man, wearing black pants and a gray jacket, fighting with several adults in the courtyard of the establishment, visibly with a weapon in his hand, before heading towards the front door.
“Fright”, “explosion”, “appalling”: French teachers contacted by AFP said they were “in shock”.
The government has asked to immediately strengthen the security of all educational establishments.
Since the attack which left 12 dead in January 2015 at the Paris headquarters of the satirical weekly Charlie Hebdo, a wave of jihadist attacks has left more than 260 dead in France.
This new violent episode comes as the war rages in Israel and the Gaza Strip, causing the executive to fear an importation of the conflict into France.
On Thursday evening, President Macron called on the French to remain “united” and promised to be “ruthless with all those who carry hatred”. France has recorded more than a hundred anti-Semitic acts since Saturday.