Two women, ages 17 and 20, were killed at a Marseille, France, train station on Sunday by a man dressed in all black who witnesses say was yelling “Allahu Akbar” before the stabbings.
The women, who were at Gare de Marseille-Saint-Charles, are the latest victims in an ongoing string of terror attacks in France and throughout Europe.
One of the women had her throat cut, and the other was stabbed in the chest and stomach.
Anti-terror prosecutors stated that they opened an investigation into “killings linked to a terrorist organization” and the “attempted killing of a public official.”
(Twitter)
The French soldiers who shot the terrorist dead were part of Operation Sentinel, an ongoing, nationwide national security operation involving armed soldiers dispersed all over France due to the increasing number of terror attacks across the country.
ISIS has claimed responsibility for the attack, according to its propaganda arm.
This latest incident comes just days after ISIS released a new recording of who they claim is Abu Bakr al-Baghdadi, the terrorist leader some thought to be dead, urging his followers to strike their enemies of the west.
This is the same train station where four American women were attacked with acid just a month ago, but that attack was deemed not terror-related. The authorities released that the attacker was a 41-year-old “deeply psychologically disturbed woman” who was known to the police for a string of small incidents.
French President Emmanuel Macron tweeted: “Deeply outraged by this barbaric act, in pain with the families and relatives of the victims of Marseille. I hail the Operation Sentinel soldiers and the police forces who reacted with extreme calmness and efficiency.”
(Twitter)
Marseille Mayor Jean-Claude Gaudin said he believed the incident to be a “terrorist attack,” while interior minister Gérard Collomb said it “could be” related to terror.
The Daily Mail summarized all of France’s terror attacks since 2012:
“TIMELINE OF TERROR: ATTACKS IN FRANCE SINCE 2012
- March, 2012 – Mohamed Merah, an al Qaeda-inspired gunman, kills seven people in three separate shootings in Toulouse. Victims included three soldiers of North African origin, a rabbi and his two young children.
- December, 2014 – A man shouting ‘Allahu Akbar’ (God is greatest) injures 13 by ramming a vehicle into a crowd in the eastern city of Dijon. Prime Minister Manuel Valls says France has ‘never before faced such a high threat linked to terrorism’.
- January, 2015 – Two brothers kill 12 people inside the Paris offices of magazine Charlie Hebdo in a supposed retaliation for the publication’s cartoons of Prophet Muhammad. More are killed subsequently in attacks on a kosher market in eastern Paris and on police. There are 17 victims in all, including two police officers. The attackers are killed.
- June, 2015 – Frenchman Yassin Salhi, 35, kills and beheads his boss and displays the severed head, surrounded by two Islamic flags, on the fence of a gas plant in Saint-Quentin-Fallavier in southeastern France. He tries to blow up the factory, but is arrested. He commits suicide in jail in December.
- November 2015 – ISIS militants kill 130 people in France’s worst atrocity since World War II. A series of suicide bomb and shooting attacks are launched on crowded sites in central Paris, as well as the northern suburb of Saint-Denis. ISIS claim responsibility. It leads to the declaration of a state of emergency in France. Police powers are expanded.
- January, 2016 – A man wielding a meat cleaver and carrying an ISIS emblem is shot dead as he tries to attack a police station in Paris. Convicted of theft in 2013, the man identified himself at the time as Moroccan-born Sallah Ali.
- June, 2016 – Two French police officers are murdered in their home in front of their 3-year-old son. ISIS claims responsibility for the slaying, carried out by a jihadist with a prior terrorist conviction. He is killed at the scene.
- July, 2016 – Amid Bastille Day celebrations in the Riviera city of Nice, a large truck is driven into a festive crowd. Some 86 people from a wide variety of countries are killed. The driver is shot dead. ISIS again claim responsibility for the attack. The state of emergency in France is extended.
- July, 2016 – Less than two weeks later, attackers slit the throat of a priest in a hostage-taking at his church in the Normandy town of Saint-Etienne-du-Rouvray.
- February, 2017 – A man armed with a machete is shot five times outside the Louvre museum after attempting to storm the historic art gallery.
- March, 2017 – Convicted criminal with links to radical Islam shouted ‘I am here to die for Allah, there will be deaths’ seconds before he was shot dead during an attack at Orly airport.
- June, 2017 – An Algerian man, 40, who had pledged allegiance to ISIS attacks a policeman with a hammer outside Notre Dame cathedral.
- August, 2017 – A mentally ill 18-year-old is arrested at the Eiffel Tower after brandishing a knife and shouting ‘Allahu Akbar’ (God is Greatest). He later told investigators he wanted to kill a soldier.
- September 2017 – French soldiers shot and a killed a man after he stabbed to death two women at Marseille’s main train station.”
