A man yesterday stabbed his mother and sister to death and seriously injured another person in Trappes, near Paris, before being shot dead by police.
The killer had serious mental health problems and had been on a terror watch list since 2016, French Minister of the Interior Gerard Collomb told reporters after visiting the scene in the town of Trappes.
The motive for the violence remained unclear despite a claim by the Islamic State (IS) group that it was an attack by one of its fighters responding to group’s propaganda.
The attacker was “mentally unstable, rather than someone who was committed, who would respond to orders from a terrorist organization, in particular Daesh,” Collomb said, using another name for IS.
Regular French criminal prosecutors are investigating the case rather than anti-terrorism specialists, Collomb said, although checks on the attacker’s cellphone and computer were under way.
Experts have urged caution about recent IS announcements, because the group has lost credibility after claiming responsibility for seemingly unrelated violence as it faces defeat on the battlefield in the Middle East.
The stabbing began early yesterday in Trappes, a poor town with a large Muslim population about 30km southwest of the capital.
Armed police responded to reports of violence and were threatened by the man, who stabbed his mother to death in her home, Collomb said.
“He walked toward the police with his knife,” he said. “Police then opened fire.”
The assailant has not yet been named.
Only a short drive from the wealthy area of Versailles, Trappes is known for its social problems linked to poverty, drugs and fundamentalist interpretations of Islam.
About 50 local residents are suspected of having left France to fight for the IS in Syria and Iraq, French security sources have said.
BFM TV said that the attacker had alcohol and drug problems.
Chinese President Xi Jinping (習近平) is to visit Russia next month for a summit of the BRICS bloc of developing economies, Chinese Minister of Foreign Affairs Wang Yi (王毅) said on Thursday, a move that comes as Moscow and Beijing seek to counter the West’s global influence. Xi’s visit to Russia would be his second since the Kremlin sent troops into Ukraine in February 2022. China claims to take a neutral position in the conflict, but it has backed the Kremlin’s contentions that Russia’s action was provoked by the West, and it continues to supply key components needed by Moscow for
Japan scrambled fighter jets after Russian aircraft flew around the archipelago for the first time in five years, Tokyo said yesterday. From Thursday morning to afternoon, the Russian Tu-142 aircraft flew from the sea between Japan and South Korea toward the southern Okinawa region, the Japanese Ministry of Defense said in a statement. They then traveled north over the Pacific Ocean and finished their journey off the northern island of Hokkaido, it added. The planes did not enter Japanese airspace, but flew over an area subject to a territorial dispute between Japan and Russia, a ministry official said. “In response, we mobilized Air Self-Defense
CRITICISM: ‘One has to choose the lesser of two evils,’ Pope Francis said, as he criticized Trump’s anti-immigrant policies and Harris’ pro-choice position Pope Francis on Friday accused both former US president Donald Trump and US Vice President Kamala Harris of being “against life” as he returned to Rome from a 12-day tour of the Asia-Pacific region. The 87-year-old pontiff’s comments on the US presidential hopefuls came as he defied health concerns to connect with believers from the jungle of Papua New Guinea to the skyscrapers of Singapore. It was Francis’ longest trip in duration and distance since becoming head of the world’s nearly 1.4 billion Roman Catholics more than 11 years ago. Despite the marathon visit, he held a long and spirited
The pitch is a classic: A young celebrity with no climbing experience spends a year in hard training and scales Mount Everest, succeeding against some — if not all — odds. French YouTuber Ines Benazzouz, known as Inoxtag, brought the story to life with a two-hour-plus documentary about his year preparing for the ultimate challenge. The film, titled Kaizen, proved a smash hit on its release last weekend. Young fans queued around the block to get into a preview screening in Paris, with Inoxtag’s management on Monday saying the film had smashed the box office record for a special cinema