French authorities are working to determine the motive behind a “savage” knife attack on infants who were playing in a park next to an idyllic lake in a French Alps town.
The head of the investigation into the stabbing said the four children, aged between 22 months and three years, were in intensive care and two adults had also been injured, one critically.
Annecy public prosecutor Line Bonnet said the 31-year-old suspected attacker’s motives remained unknown but there was no evidence of a terrorist motivation.
French Prime Minister Elisabeth Borne said the man, a Syrian with long-standing refugee status in Sweden and no criminal or psychiatric record, has a child of a similar age to the victims.
“We are talking here about infants, very young infants who have been very seriously injured,” she said, at a press conference near the scene of the attack in Annecy, just over the border from Geneva in Switzerland and about 550 kilometres south-east of Paris.
“And I think that everyone who is a parent, all of us are terrifically shocked by this event.
“It is a terrible thing that’s happened.”
The man was arrested by police using firearms and taken to the police station, Bonnet-Mathis said.
She said all four children — one aged 22 months, two aged two years old and one aged three — suffered life-threatening knife wounds, and two of them are tourists.
One of the young victims is British, the prosecutor and British authorities said, but there was confusion over whether the other foreign child was Dutch or German.
One adult also suffered knife wounds and a second adult was hurt both with the attacker’s knife and later by a shot fired by police as they were making the arrest, Bonnet-Mathis said.
Video appearing to show the attack in a children’s play park in the Alpine and lakeside town of Annecy — just over the border from Geneva in Switzerland and about 550 kilometres south-east of Paris — was posted on social media.
The horrific scenes showed a man in dark glasses and with a blue scarf covering his head brandishing a knife, as people screamed for help.
The man appeared to shout “on name of Jesus Christ” as he waved his knife in the air, while people around could be heard screaming “Police! Police!”
He slashed at a man carrying rucksacks who tried to approach him, seemingly trying to stop the attack.
Inside the enclosed play park itself, a panicked woman frantically pushed a stroller as the attacker approached, yelling “Help! Help!” and ramming the stroller into the park’s barriers in her terror.
She tried to fend off the attacker but couldn’t keep him from leaning over the stroller and stabbing downward repeatedly. The shrill cries of a child followed.
The man strolled almost casually out of the park, letting himself out through a gate, with the man carrying two rucksacks still chasing after him.
French President Emmanuel Macron said “children and an adult are between life and death”.
“The nation is in shock,” Macron said on Twitter.
Annecy Deputy Mayor Chantale Farmer said the town of 125,000 was “shocked and devastated”, adding that nearby schools had temporarily been locked down following the attack.
“Children go there with their parents, with the kindergartens, and with their grandparents,” she told the BBC of the park, where a children’s playground sits across a short pedestrian bridge from a lush, tree-lined area.
“It’s a really nice place for the kids. We go there, as people from Annecy, with my children we go there often.
“So it’s always crowded and the kids really like that place, and so it’s a place where you can find a lot of people.
“So the attacker I think knew where he was going.”
A witness who spoke to BFMTV said at least one of the children was attacked in a stroller by the man who approached and “started stabbing”.
“I screamed, screamed at them to intervene,” he said.
An ice cream seller who works in the waterside park said he’d seen the suspected attacker there several days previously, looking out at the lake ringed by mountains.
Borne said the man had held refugee status in Sweden for about 10 years, and had applied for asylum protection in France, which was not granted given he already had rights to live and travel there thanks to his status in the fellow European Union country.
She said the French administration would look at that refugee status but stressed her priority was offering solidarity to the victims.
The Swedish Migration Agency said he was granted permanent residency in 2013. The agency did not identify the suspect but said he subsequently sought Swedish citizenship in 2017 and 2018, both denied, and applied again in August 2022.
Eleanor Vincent, an American author vacationing in Annecy, told The Associated Press of her shock at seeing an emergency helicopter descending to the picturesque park.
“As soon as I heard the sirens and saw police running, I knew something horrible was happening. I am in shock. It’s a park where they take children out to walk,” Vincent said.
Crowds stood in “absolute silence”, dumbfounded as the tragedy unfolded, she said.
“As a parent who has lost a child, I know what these parents are experiencing. It’s a horror beyond belief,” Vincent added.
A local politician, Antoine Armand, said the children were attacked on a playground in the park.
Speaking to BFMTV from the National Assembly building in Paris, he said the victims included “very young” children and that they were “savagely attacked”.
In Paris, politicians interrupted a debate to hold a moment of silence for the victims.
“There are some very young children who are in critical condition and I invite you to respect a minute of silence for them, for their families, and so that, we hope, the consequences of this very grave attack do not lead to the nation grieving,” assembly President Yaël Braun-Pivet said.
