Marseille 'terrorist' attack: Two stabbed to death, attacker killed by French soldiers
Channel: Flash video
Date: 01/10/2017

Two people have been killed in a knife attack at Marseille's Saint Charles train station.

Marseille 'terrorist' attack: Two stabbed to death, attacker killed by French soldiers

Marseille: Fatal knife attack at train station
2 women killed in French train station attack, officials say
Two people have been killed in a knife attack at Marseille's Saint Charles train station.
The assailant has been shot dead by security forces in the southern French city. The incident is being treated as an act of terrorism, officials say.
"Two victims have been stabbed to death," regional police chief Olivier de Mazieres told AFP.
France's Interior Minister, Gérard Collomb, said he was immediately travelling to the scene.
France's national police tweeted that the situation at the station had been resolved, and the perpetrator "neutralised and shot down".
Police had earlier asked people to avoid the area.
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An unnamed official told France's Le Monde newspaper that the assailant had cried "Allahu Akbar" (God is greatest).
French media report that both victims were women; one had her throat cut and the other was stabbed to death.
According to BFMTV, the attacker was killed by French soldiers who were already in the station as part of Operation Sentinelle, which sees combat troops patrol streets and protect key sites amid an ongoing state of emergency.
Emergency services vehicles are seen outside the Saint Charles train station (1 October)Image copyrightREUTERS
The man who carried out the attack was in his twenties and of North African appearance, reports say.
France's national train operator SNCF has asked people to postpone planned journeys via the station.
Two women were stabbed to death and their assailant shot dead by soldiers in the southern French port city of Marseille on Sunday in what police sources described as a "likely terrorist act".

Three police sources said the suspect had shouted "Allahu Akbar" (God is greatest) as he carried out his attack at Marseille's main railway station.

The two victims — one aged 17 and the other 20 — suffered gory injuries, two police sources said, saying one had her throat slit while the other was stabbed in the stomach.

"If the military had not been there, we would have had a lot more deaths," Samia Ghali, lawmaker for the Marseille region, told France Bleu Province radio.

Some 200 police officers had cordoned off the area and all roads were closed to traffic, with security forces saying the operation was still ongoing.

The Paris prosecutor opened a counter-terrorism probe.

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France has been in a state of emergency following a spate of attacks by Islamist militants over the last two years, including attacks in Paris in November 2015 which killed 130 people. Other countries, including Britain, Germany and Belgium, have also suffered attacks using knives, guns, explosives and vehicles.

A witness told Reuters she saw a man take out a knife from his sleeve and then stab a young girl and then a second woman, shouting what could have been "Allahu Akbar".

She added that she saw soldiers from France's Sentinelle force who were patrolling in the area arrive on the public square at the Gare Saint-Charles station.

Two police sources said the attacker had been carrying a butcher's knife, was around 30 years old and of North African appearance. One of the sources said no identification papers were found on him.

Interior Minister Gerard Collomb said he was heading to the site of the attack.

"We have generally avoided these sorts of attacks in Marseille," regional president Renaud Muselier, who was speaking from the site of the killings, told BFM TV.

"I think the security services responded extremely quickly. It's difficult to do more because when you see the distance between the two bodies and the attacker it's only 10 metres, so they intervened quickly."