Man arrested after four toddlers stabbed, badly hurt in France

PARIS — A man with a knife stabbed four young children at a lakeside park in the French Alps on Thursday, assaulting at least one in a stroller repeatedly. Authorities said the children, between 22 months and three years old, suffered life-threatening injuries. Two adults were also wounded.

The helplessness of the young victims and the savagery of the attack sickened France and drew international condemnation.

A suspect, identified by police as a 31-year-old Syrian, was detained in connection with the morning attack in the town of Annecy. French authorities said he had recently been refused asylum in France, because Sweden had already granted him permanent residency and refugee status a decade ago.

Witnesses reported scenes of terror as the man roamed the park, ambushing victims with his blade.

“I said to the police: ‘Shoot him, kill him! He’s stabbing everyone,’ ” said Anthony Le Tallec, a former professional soccer player who was jogging when he came across the attacker.

Lead prosecutor Line BonnetMathis said the man’s motives were unknown but did not appear to be terrorism-related. He was armed with a folding knife, she said.

She said all four children suffered life-threatening knife wounds. The youngest is 22 months old, two are age two and the oldest is three, she said. Two of them are French, the other two were tourists — one British, the other Dutch.

Two adults also suffered knife wounds — life-threatening for one them, the prosecutor said. One of the adults was hurt both by the attacker’s knife and later by a shot fired by police as they were making the arrest, BonnetMathis said.

Video appearing to show the attack in and around a children’s play park was posted on social media. The footage 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 nearby could be heard screaming: “Police! Police!”

He slashed at a man carrying rucksacks who tried to approach him. Inside the enclosed play park, a panicked woman frantically pushed a stroller as the attacker approached, yelling “Help! Help!” and ramming the stroller into the barriers around the site in her terror.

She tried to fend off the attacker but couldn’t keep him from leaning over the stroller and stabbing downward repeatedly. Afterward, 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 described the assault as an “attack of absolute cowardice.”

“The nation is in shock,” Macron wrote on Twitter.

Le Tallec said in an Instagram video that he first came across “a mother who said to me: ‘Run! Run! There’s someone stabbing everyone. I saw him sprinting straight for some grandpas and grandmas. And there, he attacked, he attacked the grandpa, he stabbed him.”

The prosecutor said the suspect had been living in the Annecy area since last fall and had no fixed address. An ice cream seller who works in the waterside park said he’d seen the attacker there several days earlier, looking out at the lake ringed by mountains.

The suspect was a political refugee in Sweden, BonnetMathis said.