Two Stabbed in Knife Attack Near Former Charlie Hebdo Offices in Paris
Two people were stabbed on Friday in a knife attack outside the former offices of satirical magazine Charlie Hebdo in Paris, multiple outlets reported.
Police arrested a suspect shortly afterwards, but did not say whether it was a terrorist attack. The stabbing comes five years after two terrorists entered the magazine’s offices armed with various weapons and opened fire on magazine staff, killing twelve and injuring eleven. The terrorists targeted Charlie Hebdo because it had published material mocking Islam and the prophet Muhammad.
“An attack with a bladed weapon was carried out in the 11th arrondissement in front of the former offices of Charlie Hebdo,” French prime minister Jean Castex told reporters on Friday. Castex termed the attack a “serious event.”
A witness told France’s BFM TV that he heard screaming outside his office and moved to look out the window.
“I saw a young woman with a huge head wound, blood was running all over her face,” the witness said.
Friday’s attack came amid the trial of 14 suspected accomplices to the 2015 shooters, who had pledged allegiance to Al Qaeda. The terrorist group recently issued new threats after Charlie Hebdo decided to reprint the cartoons lampooning Muhammad and Islam that preceded the 2015 attack, on the opening day of the trial of accomplices.
Charlie Hebdo’s current editors wrote that not reprinting the cartoons would be “political or journalistic cowardice.”
“Do we want to live in a country that claims to be a great democracy, free and modern, which, at the same time, does not affirm its most profound convictions?” the editors wrote.
Editor’s note: this article initially stated that there were four stabbing victims on Friday, the number first put out by French authorities. The article has been updated to reflect the revised number of victims.
