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PARIS – Seven people were injured Sunday night by a stabbing assailant, including two British tourists.
The perpetrator was arrested by the police and the attack was not originally considered terrorism. His motivations and identity were not immediately known.
A spokesman for the Paris police headquarters confirmed that several people had been injured in the 19th arrondissement, in the north-east of the French capital, but that it was difficult to know how many people had been attacked or even assaulted. The spokesman declined to comment further.
The attacker, armed with a knife and a metal bar, attacked three people near a cinema on the quai de la Loire, shortly before 23 hours, according to the newspaper Le Parisien and the news channel BFM TV.
A group of men playing petanque nearby tried to stop the attacker – one of them threw his petanque ball on him – but the only one was a bunny. Assailant continued down a side street and attacked other people, including British tourists.
The police were then able to arrest him.
Mounir Mahjoubi, French Minister of Digital Affairs, elected to Parliament last year in the district that includes the 19th arrondissement, expressed his thanks on Twitter for "the people who intervened against the attacker".
"Solidarity with the victims and deep gratitude for the firefighters and emergency services who immediately arrived, and for the police forces that allowed the arrest," Mahjoubi said.
The Paris prosecutor's office, which handled the file, was not immediately available for comment.
Although Paris was the target of several deadly terrorist attacks in January and November 2015, no large-scale attacks have occurred since.
Instead, there have been sporadic and smaller attacks by isolated attackers, some of them seemingly inspired by terrorist groups like the Islamic State. In May, a man Born in Chechnya, he was on the authorities' terrorism watch list. He attacked several people in the center of Paris with a knife, killing one person and injuring 4 others.
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