A woman is in critical condition after police opened fire at an individual allegedly threatening people on public transport, including crying “Allahu akhbar” and making statements advocating terrorism.
Police responded to an alert at a central Paris metro station on Tuesday morning as a woman who was threatening to trigger an explosion. The heavily clothed woman — described as “fully veiled” in an abaya by French newspaper Le Figaro — refused to show her hands when commanded by police, and was shot eight times by two police officers after several warnings were ignored.
The suspect is in hospital receiving care under police custody and is described as being in critical condition.
Le Parisien reports the individual threatened to set off an explosion, stated an attack was going to take place, and made death threats against fellow passengers, while also shouting “Allahu Akbar”. The newspaper notes the suspect is now known to have already made threats against French soldiers deployed to guard French streets, schools, and places of worship s part of the government’s Operation Sentinel in the past.
No explosives were discovered at the scene.
The shooting underlines the febrile situation in many major European cities in the wake of the Hamas terror attack against Israel earlier this month, one of the largest in history with over 1,400 killed in a single day. Several European governments have put their own security services on alert, responding to a sudden surge in antisemitic attacks in their own nations, and stating the risk of terror attack happening in Europe had considerably increased.
There was a spate of attacks and threats in Europe immediately after the Hamas attack, including in France, with a teacher killed in an “Allahu Akhbar” attack days later.
