A woman reportedly shouting “Allahu Akbar” has attacked and injured two people at a supermarket in La Seyne-sur-Mer, southeastern France. She has been taken into custody and is being checked for terrorist links.
She was detained after assaulting an employee and a customer with a cutter knife at a store in the Var department on Sunday, BFM TV reports, citing a local prosecutor.
It is said that the customer was stabbed in the chest, while the employee was injured in the eye. The attacker, dressed in black and wearing a veil, was stopped by the supermarket staff, BFM TV reports.
The woman shouted “Allahu Akbar” at the moment of the attack, according to an AFP reporter who spoke with witnesses. However the woman could have a mental disorder, the prosecutor noted. Still, police have not ruled out the possibility that the woman had been radicalized.
The perpetrator was reportedly born in France in 1994, and was not previously known to the intelligence services. Law enforcement is currently searching her house, checking whether she had links to Islamic State (IS, formerly ISIS).
Another incident in which an attacker reportedly shouted “Allahu akbar” left one person dead and several others injured in Paris in May. The assailant, a 21-year old French national of Chechen origin, was previously known to security servicers and was listed the national security threat list, known as Fiche S.
France has been plagued by a series of terrorist attacks and has remained on high alert since 2015. In 2017, the country faced several terrorism-linked incidents, including shootings and car ramming. The attack in La Seyne-sur-Mer has not been linked to terrorism so far and is currently being investigated.
