Within a space of two minutes, an attacker stabbed six people at the Gare du Nord station in Paris on Wednesday, before being shot and apprehended by Police.
Gatekeepers News reports that the Gare du Nord is a busy commuter hub which also serves as a departure point for trains to Northern France, London and Northern Europe.
Interior Minister Gerald Darmanin stated via his Twitter account, “An individual injured several people this morning at the Gare du Nord,”
“He was quickly neutralised. Thank you to the police for their effective and courageous response”.
The attacker’s motive was not immediately clear and the police were treating the stabbings as attempted murder, not as a terrorist attack.
One of the six people was seriously wounded in the attack at 6:42 am (05:42 GMT), while the other five sustained light injuries, prosecutors said.
It was not immediately clear what type of weapon the attacker had used.
Police initially described it as a bladed weapon. Interior Minister Gerald Darmanin said the entire incident was over within two minutes and later described the weapon as a “threatening weapon” but not a knife.
The attacker was shot three times and was taken to hospital where he was fighting for his life.
The police who intervened were off-duty officers in plain clothes who used their service weapons to stop the attack.
The police officers “were returning from duty at police headquarters to take their train and go home, but they were armed”, Darmanin said.
Darmanin noted that the police officers were authorized to make use of their weapons although not on duty.
One member of the border police deployed at the station was lightly injured.
The incident caused delays to trains at the station in the early morning rush as police cordoned off the station, and set up large white curtains around the attack scene.
But no services were canceled, a spokesman for the rail operators had said.
The Gare du Nord is one of the world’s busiest train stations with 700,000 travellers per day.
France remains on a state of heightened security alert after a spate of deadly attacks by Islamist radicals, and others, since 2015.
