French police secure the site near the Louvre Pyramid in Paris, yesterday.
Paris: A French soldier patrolling at the Louvre museum shot and seriously injured a machete-wielding attacker yesterday, thrusting security and the terror threat back into the limelight three months before elections.
Police held hundreds of tourists in secure areas of the renowned tourist attraction after the assailant was shot five times around 0900 GMT in a public area near one of the museum’s entrances.
The knifeman is in a serious condition. One soldier received a “minor” head wound and has been taken to hospital, security forces said.
Prime Minister Bernard Cazeneuve said the incident, which will heap more misery on city’s struggling tourism sector, was “terrorist in nature.”
It sparked fresh jitters and anger in a country still reeling from a string of terror attacks over last two years and under a state of emergency since November 2015. The economy, immigration and security are major issues for voters ahead of presidential and parliamentary elections which had been forecast to confirm the country’s shift right after five years of Socialist rule.
US President Donald Trump tweeted that a “new radical Islamic terrorist has just attacked in Louvre Museum in Paris. Tourists were locked down. France on edge again. GET SMART US.”
Witnesses described scenes of panic as shoppers, sightseers and workers fled the Louvre complex following the incident. “We heard gunshots. We didn’t know what it was about. Then we evacuated the employees and we left,” a man who works in a nearby restaurant told reporters.
A woman colleague said: “We saw death coming for us, with everything that’s happening at the moment. We were very, very scared.”
The lucrative Paris tourism industry has been a major casualty of the terror attacks, with visitors cancelling or shortening their stays.
Thousands of troops have been deployed to guard the capital, with groups of soldiers carrying automatic rifles a regular sight inside Louvre and around its sculpture-filled gardens.
Security forces simulated an attack there in early December to rehearse for such an emergency.
“It’s so sad and shocking... we can’t let them win, it’s horrible,” British tourist Gillian Simms, who was visiting Paris with her daughters, said yesterday.
Jessie McCaw, a 18-year-old from the US state of Montana, said she had been evacuated but she appeared unfazed. “I’m not worried because the police seem prepared in France, which is reassuring,” she said.
The huge former royal palace in heart of the city is home to Mona Lisa and other legendary artworks as well as shops and restaurants. City police chief Michel Cadot told reporters that a man whose behaviour was “suspicious” had also been arrested following the attack.
The series of terror attacks in France began in January 2015 when jihadist gunmen rampaged through Charlie Hebdo newspaper and a Jewish supermarket, leaving 17 people dead in three days of bloodshed.
Ten months later, gunmen and suicide bombers from the IS jihadist group attacked, restaurants, a concert hall and national stadium in Paris on November 13, 2015, killing 130 people.
