BBC
Four young children have been stabbed in a park near Lake Annecy, in France’s south-east.
Police overpowered and arrested the attacker, Interior Minister Gérald Darmanin said.
Authorities said the children were aged three or younger and most were in a critical condition.
UK Foreign Secretary James Cleverly said one of the injured children was British. The three-year-old girl is now stable, the local administration said.
One of the other children is Dutch. An adult was also injured and is also critically ill, according to the administration.
Police have confirmed that the suspect is a 31-year-old Syrian, who had refugee status in Sweden.
Regional deputy Antoine Armand described the attack as “abominable” and said authorities were investigating but knew “very little”.
Video footage of the attack uploaded to social media – too graphic for broadcast – shows a little playground, with life going on as normal. Children are running around, and their parents and minders are there.
Then a man comes in with a knife, and very quickly there are screams. He’s clearly looking for children to attack – and he attacks one in a pushchair.
In part of the video, life is going on as normal, and in another part, there is a man wandering around with a knife. You can see he is actively looking for children.
French Prime Minister Élisabeth Borne and Mr Darmanin went to the scene of the attack.
Ms Borne told a news conference that four children and two adults were injured, with some of them in intensive care.
The attacker has “no criminal or psychiatric record” and has a child “aged around the same age as those he attacked”, she said.
Annecy prosecutor Line Bonnet-Mathis told reporters that the young victims ranged from 22 months old to three years, adding that the children were in a “severe state”.
One of the adults was seriously injured and the other only slightly, she added.
There “doesn’t seem to be any kind of terrorist…
