Stabbings in Paris considered terror attack
PARIS — Two people were stabbed Friday near the former offices of satirical magazine Charlie Hebdo, the scene of a 2015 attack that left 17 dead. French police were investigating the stabbings as a terrorist attack.
Security forces wearing camouflage and carrying long guns rushed to the scene, the Interior Ministry tweeted, and Paris metro lines were closed and school children initially kept inside in the area around the attack.
The two victims worked for the documentary film company Premieres Lignes, company founder Paul Moreira told BFM television. He said they were outside on a cigarette break when a man with a “butcher’s knife” attacked them on the street, before fleeing. Moreira added that the company had not received any threats.
Premiere Lignes, which translates to "Frontline," specializes in investigative reports. Their office is located on the same floor of the former Charlie Hebdo locale and their journalists filmed part of the attack on the Charlie Hebdo offices in 2015.
"All the team at Charlie offers support and solidarity to its former neighbors and colleagues at PLTVfilms and to the people hit by this odious attack," Charlie Hebdo tweeted shortly after the stabbings.
Paris Prosecutor Rémy Heitz said two people had been arrested, although only one was suspected of having committed the crime.
At the same news conference, French Prime Minister Jean Castex said that the lives of the two wounded workers were not in danger. He offered the government's solidarity with their families and colleagues.
The building in the northeast of the city is no longer used by Charlie Hebdo, and since the 2015 attack, the magazine's staff have been subject to repeated threats. Last week police took an employee from her home to a safe place because of a "concrete" threat, the police said.
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Fourteen people, three of whom are being tried in absentia, are currently on trial for that attack. They face charges including "complicity" in terrorist crimes and “criminal terrorist association.”
The court heard that they had sought to avenge the Prophet Mohammad, nearly a decade after the weekly published cartoons mocking him.
Earlier this month Charlie Hebdo republished controversial caricatures of the Prophet Muhammad to mark the start of the trial.
Nancy Ing reported from Paris, and Alexander Smith from London.
The Associated Press contributed to this report.
