Saturday’s mobilization announcement came after President Macron held an emergency security cabinet meeting on Friday evening.
ADVERTISING
France is mobilizing 7,000 troops and raising its alert status to “emergency attack” level following the death of a teacher in the northeastern city of Arras on Friday who was stabbed by a former student with Islamic radicalism.
President Emmanuel Macron made the decision after calling an emergency meeting of his security cabinet on Friday evening.
Macron has described the knife attack, which seriously injured two other school staff, as “Islamist terrorism”.
He ordered “up to 7,000 soldiers of the Sentinelle force, who will be deployed until Monday evening and until further notice,” the Elysée Palace said on Saturday morning.
What happened in Arras?
French authorities have launched an anti-terrorism investigation following the Arras attack.
A man armed with a knife killed a teacher and left two others wounded at a secondary school in the city of nearly 41,000 on Friday morning, according to local police. The attacker was arrested on site.
The incident occurred at Gambetta High School in the city center. According to police, the attacker shouted “Allah Akbar” – “God is great” in Arabic.
He was named as 18-year-old Mohammed Mogouchkov, a former student of the school of Chechen origin who was the subject of “active surveillance” by France’s General Directorate of Internal Security DGSI.
Mogouchkgov was stopped and searched just last week but was released because there was no reason to hold him, officials said.
No students were injured in the attack, but a security guard and a teacher were seriously injured from multiple stab wounds.
Macron visits the crime scene and then holds a security cabinet meeting
French President Emmanuel Macron visited the school on Friday afternoon and called on people to “remain united” and “stand together” in the face of the “barbarism of Islamist terrorism.”
Speaking in the courtyard of a building near the school where Friday morning’s deadly attack occurred, Macron said: “The decision has been made not to give in to terror and not to let anything divide us.”
Later on Friday evening, Macron held an emergency meeting of his security cabinet in Paris.
Senior government ministers, police, military and intelligence officials attended the meeting, which came after confirmation of a second security incident.
A 24-year-old man known to be “radicalized” was arrested and taken into police custody for carrying a knife as he left a mosque in Limay, on the outskirts of Paris.
The Versailles public prosecutor’s office confirmed the man’s arrest.