Art lovers yesterday returned to the Louvre in Paris, 24 hours after a soldier shot a machete-wielding attacker at the museum, believed to be an Egyptian who entered the country a week ago.
The incident has thrust security and the terror threat back into the limelight three months before elections in France, with authorities saying it was a “terrorist” assault.
The attacker, in a black T-shirt bearing a skull design and armed with two 40cm machetes, lunged at four patrolling French soldiers while shouting Allahu Akbar (“God is great”), Paris prosecutor Francois Molins told a news conference.
One of the troops was struck on the head and another fell to the ground outside the Paris museum after the assailant attacked. The second soldier managed to open fire and hit the machete-wielder in the stomach.
“The attacker fell to the ground, seriously wounded. He has been taken to hospital and is fighting for his life,” the prosecutor said.
A source later said that the suspect’s condition had stabilized.
Security forces said one soldier had suffered a minor head wound.
Police held hundreds of tourists in secure areas of the museum after the assailant was shot five times at about 10am in a public area near one of the museum’s entrances.
The attacker, who is thought to be aged 29 and living in the United Arab Emirates, is believed to have entered France legally on a flight from Dubai on Jan. 26, a source said.
An Egyptian passport, thought to be the suspect’s, was found during a search of an apartment in an expensive district of Paris near the Champs-Elysees.
Investigators are examining the Twitter account of an Egyptian man, named Abdallah El Hamahmy, after about a dozen messages were posted in Arabic between 9:27am and 9:34am, just minutes prior to the attack.
“In the name of Allah... for our brothers in Syria and fighters across the world,” El Hamahmy wrote, before making reference to the Islamic State group in another tweet one minute later.
The Emirati government condemned the “hateful crime” and assured France of its “full solidarity.”
As French authorities probed the attacker’s background, French President Francois Hollande said that “there is little doubt as to the terrorist nature of this act,” an assessment echoed by French Prime Minister Bernard Cazeneuve.
France was already reeling from a string of terror attacks over the past two years and the country has been under a state of emergency since November 2015.
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