“Crowds, screams, blood”: Thursday’s knife attack on children and adults near Lake Annecy has sowed fear in this normally peaceful town in south-eastern France, where witnesses and residents were amazed and devastated.
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“It’s a shock,” said 27-year-old Kévin Poncin, who stopped his bike near the Garden of Europe, not far from the Pâquier promenade that borders the crystal-clear waters of the lake where the attack happened . The attack was carried out by a Syrian refugee and injured six people, including four children between the ages of 22 months and three years.
In a very crude video of the attack circulating on social media, the man dressed in black with a scarf over his head can be seen jumping into a park playground after being attacked by a man armed with a bag.
We see him stab several children, two of whom are housed in a two-seater stroller, and then jump from one to the other. A man yells, “Call the police!”
The attacker was eventually pushed back by a woman who yelled “Help!” Stop! Stop him!” by trying to protect the stroller and by the man with the bag calling out to passers-by for help: “Help me control him”!
“My 17-year-old was there. One person brandished a knife and stabbed a baby in a stroller, he saw that, then saw the crowd, screams, blood. It wasn’t pretty to look at,” a mother who picked up her son in the prefecture, without giving her name, told AFP.
According to various witnesses, after fleeing the area, the man attacked an elderly person before being very quickly arrested by the police and shot dead in an attempt to immobilize him.
“It’s inhuman. I heard the screams of the parents, then I saw the attacker with the knife. That’s when I realized something serious was happening. I told myself that if I ran away I would die, so I walked away. In these cases, all we care about is our survival. Then he went to the lakeside promenade and we heard gunshots,” said Clémence, a 17-year-old high school student.
“I was walking along the lake and suddenly I see dozens of people running in the opposite direction from me. I wonder what’s going on, there’s a mother telling me, ‘Run! Run! There is someone who stabs everyone all over the lake, he stabbed children!” said former professional footballer Anthony Le Tallec in a short Instagram.
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“I keep going and I actually see the guy getting onto the turf in front of me. I see police officers five or ten meters behind him who cannot catch him. He’s coming towards me, so I walk away. And I see he goes straight for grandpas and grandmas and he attacks grandpa, he stabs him once, the cops behind him can’t catch him. And I tell them: “But shoot him, kill him! He stabs everyone!”
“He attacks once, twice, and then they start shooting, then they shoot in front of me, at the person, then he falls to the ground, grandpa has already been hit.” I continue my run and see children on the ground, very unfortunate, affected children,” testified again the player who ended his career in that city, adding: “It’s crazy to see that in Annecy.”
A large police presence cordoned off the area surrounding the park, an AFP journalist noted.
“It is concerning everybody. “I hope that the politicians maintain some stability between people and do not encourage mixing and confusion towards foreigners or French people of foreign origin,” a 48-year-old father responded under the guise of anonymity.
It is checked whether the attack has a terrorist character or not. The suspect, who was wearing a Christian cross when arrested, had stated in his asylum application lodged in France that he was a “Christian from Syria,” according to a police source.