CNN
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At least six people were injured in an attack on the Gare du Nord station in Paris early Wednesday morning, limiting access to one of the French capital’s main rail hubs.
According to French Interior Minister Gérald Dalmanin, the individual began attacking people at 6:42 a.m. local time and was neutralized a minute later. At a press conference, Mr Dalmanin said the person was disarmed by off-duty police and border guards returning home.
The attacker used a metal hook in the incident and punched the first victim about 20 times, prosecutors said late Tuesday.
The attackers made their own weapons, Darmanin said earlier. Initially, the person said he started attacking people with a knife at 6:45 am local time.
Police said several police officers opened fire, including a security guard from the railroad company SNCF. Multiple shots were fired, injuring the alleged attacker.
The attacker, who is said to be in critical condition, has since been hospitalized and undergoing surgery.
The injured include two male passengers aged 36 and 41, three female passengers aged 40, 47 and 53, and a 46-year-old police officer from the Gare du Nord station border guard.
“At the moment, only a 36-year-old man is hospitalized and is not in a critical condition,” prosecutors said.
The Paris public prosecutor’s office said the motive for the knife attack was unclear.
France’s National Anti-Terrorism Public Prosecutor’s Office said it was “assessing the facts” about the attack but had yet to take up the case. The secretariat added that it could be long.
A French prosecutor described the attacker as “possibly a Libyan or Algerian in his twenties”.
“Precise identification of the suspect is ongoing,” the prosecutor’s statement added, noting that the individual was “enrolled under several identities in an automated fingerprint file.” The statement said the attacker could not yet be questioned “given his state of health.”
France’s anti-terrorism prosecutor’s office said it was “assessing the facts” but had yet to take up the case.
Dalmannin arrived at Gare du Nord station shortly after Wednesday morning’s attacks. Earlier, he wrote on Twitter that the alleged attacker injured several people before being “rapidly neutralized”.
“Thank you to the police for their effective and courageous response,” Dermanin said on Twitter.
CNN affiliate BFMTV interviewed one woman, identified only as Lili, who witnessed the attack and helped injured victims.
“My friends and I went on vacation this morning and when we were at the entrance of the train station, we heard people screaming,” she said.
“We saw two people on the ground. It’s a knife!” he started screaming. and started running away. I helped the first victim who was attacked, but I got the impression that the person was attacking all those who approached him and tried to overwhelm him.
“I helped the wounded who were in shock after being attacked. I took them to the police and tried to find my friend when I heard gunshots. It felt like an eternity to me, but it didn’t even last five minutes.
“We are all shocked by what we saw. We were two meters apart. We were so close it could have been one of us.” It’s so traumatic.”
Hundreds had coalesced on the main concourse of Gare du Nord station, many looking for information about the train after the attack, according to the station’s CNN team.
Dozens of police officers were stationed around a security perimeter that cordoned off most of the station’s main concourse and blocked access to several intercity train platforms, according to CNN’s team. Access to the Eurostar terminal has been restored after being cut off for several hours.
Police screens hid the scene of the attack, but police officers could be seen gathering evidence in paper bags.
Paris residents were beginning to relax after years of heightened tensions over terrorist attacks, but Wednesday’s incident was the second in two months not to be investigated as terrorism-related by French authorities. In 2011, a man who was being investigated for racist violence by the Paris public prosecutor’s office at the time shot dead three Kurdish activists in northern Paris.
Still, the atmosphere at the Gare du Nord was calm around noon on Wednesday, and passengers seemed to expect to catch the train in time.
