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Children fight for their lives after French Alps knife attack

Several people, including preschool-aged children, have been wounded in a knife attack at a park in the French Alps.

The French prosecutor said four children aged between 22 months and three years suffered life-threatening wounds in the assault on Thursday in the town of Annecy, which President Emmanuel Macron said was an act of “absolute cowardice”.

One of the wounded children is a British national.

The suspected attacker, who has been arrested, had refugee status in Sweden and is a Syrian national. His motive was unclear, officials said.

Prime Minister Elisabeth Borne said the country was in a state of “shock”.

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A chilling video of several policemen overpowering the suspect in a park has been widely shared on social media.

Anthony Le Tallec, a former professional football player with Liverpool FC, said he was jogging around the pristine waters of Lake Annecy in the foothills of the Alps when a wave of panicked bystanders rushed past in the opposite direction.

One mother urged him to turn and run.

Confused, Le Tallec said he kept jogging through the park but soon saw a man heading his way with police officers in pursuit but struggling to catch up.

“I see that he’s heading straight for a group of elderly men and women. He attacks one grandpa, stabs him once, the cops can’t catch him, so I tell the cops, ‘shoot him’,” Le Tallec continued.

 

National Assembly speaker Yael Braun-Pivet said there was “nothing more abominable than to attack children”, while the French Parliament observed a minute of silence to mark the incident.

Al Jazeera’s Natacha Butler, reporting from Paris, said the attack that took place at around 9:45am local time (7:45 GMT) was “every parent’s nightmare”.

“It’s summer at the moment, parents go out with their young children, nannies and carers. The kids are in sandpits or on the slides. The last thing that you could imagine happening is the children being vulnerable to this kind of violence and this sort of attack,” she said.

“One witness said that she saw the man lunging at children in a pram, so, people are incredibly shocked here in France,” Butler added.

Annecy is a quiet Alpine town of 135,000 people that lies south of the Swiss city of Geneva.

Dominique Griziaux said he was at the nearby “Pop Beach” when the wail of sirens filled the air. The attack had left him feeling sick inside.

“You put yourself in the place of parents and grandparents put through this drama,” said Griziaux, an Annecy resident, adding that an attack on such young children was “just unthinkable”.

“You’d never think this could be possible in such a peaceful, bucolic environment as Annecy.”

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