Rabat – A knife attack on an administrative assistant at a French police station in Rambouillet, has shocked France, with authorities suspecting terrorist motives.
On Friday afternoon, April 23, a 36-year old Tunisian man attacked an administrative assistant at a police station. Waiting outside the police station, the man talked on his phone before attacking a 49-year old woman as she entered through the station’s security door.
The attacker stabbed the unarmed police employee in the neck, prompting her colleagues to open fire, mortally wounding the assailant. Police sources have told French media the assailant shouted “Allahu akhbar” during the violent assault, prompting a terrorism probe by France’s national police.
Three of the Tunisian man’s “entourage” were taken into custody for questioning following the gruesome assault, according to French news agency AFP.
Read also: The Vicious Cycle Of Extremism Continues to Spiral in France
Shortly after the attack French President Emmanuel Macron identified the deceased police employee by her first name Stephanie. Within hours of the attack, Macron and several other high-level French politicians described the attack as motivated by “Islamist Terrorism.”
With the terrorism investigation underway, many drew links between the knife attack and recent extremist attacks on a church in Nice as well as the gruesome beheading of teacher Samuel Paty in Paris.
Islam has become a heavily politicized issue in France, with many politicians competing over ever more stringent measures and restrictions against France’s Muslim community.
The Friday knife attack again sparked debate over French politics as Macron will potentially face the openly Islamophobic far-right candidate Marine Le Pen in the 2022 French presidential elections.
