Tourist Stabbed to Death by Terrorist Targeting Passersby in Paris

French gendarmes patrol the Trocadero plaza near the Eiffel Tower after a man targeted passersbys late saturday, killing a German tourist with a knife and injuring two others in Paris on Dec. 3, 2023. Christophe Ena/AP Photo

A German tourist has been killed and another two injured by an assailant who attacked passersby with a knife near the Eiffel Tower in Paris, French Interior Minister Gerald Darmanin said on Saturday.

“The police have just courageously arrested an assailant attacking passersby in Paris, around the Quai de Grenelle,” Mr. Darmanin stated on X (formerly known as Twitter). “Please avoid the area.”

The incident happened at around 7 p.m. local time when the male assailant attacked a tourist couple with a knife on the Quai de Grenelle, which is close to the Eiffel Tower, according to multiple reports.

Mr. Darmanin said the assailant fatally stabbed the German tourist while the wife was saved due to the timely intervention of a taxi driver. The assailant then fled the scene and injured two other people using a hammer.

Details about the victims were not immediately known.

The assailant was subsequently subdued with a taser and apprehended by the police. He was identified only as a 25-year-old French citizen who had spent four years in prison for plotting a violent offense.

The suspect allegedly shouted “Allahu Akhbar”—which translates to “God is greatest” in Arabic—and expressed to police that he was distressed about Muslims dying in Afghanistan and Palestine.

“This person was ready to kill others,” Mr. Darmanin told reporters.

French President Emmanuel Macron extended his condolences to the family of the German national and thanked the emergency forces for their swift action in apprehending the suspect.

He called the incident a terrorist attack.

“The national anti-terrorism prosecutor’s office now seized will be responsible for shedding light on this matter so that justice can be done in the name of the French people,” Mr. Macron stated on X.

The attacker left prison in 2020 and was under surveillance and undergoing psychiatric treatment, Mr. Darmanin said, painting a brief portrait of the assailant, who was born in Neuilly-Sur-Seine, a Paris suburb. He was most recently living with his parents in the Essonne region, south of Paris.

France has been under a heightened terror alert since the fatal stabbing in October of a teacher in the northern city of Arras by a former student originally from the Ingushetia region in Russia’s Caucasus Mountains and suspected of Islamic radicalization.

That fatal attack came three years after another teacher was killed outside Paris, beheaded by a radicalized Chechen later killed by police.

The Associated Press contributed to this report.