Paris attack: stabbing near Charlie Hebdo’s office ‘an act of terror’

A stabbing in Paris that left two seriously injured is being treated as a terrorist attack, the French interior minister said.

Gérald Darmanin said the attack near the former office of the satirical magazine Charlie Hebdo was “clearly an act of Islamist terrorism.”

A man of Pakistani origin described as the main suspect was arrested near the scene.

At least four other people have also been arrested.

The victims, a man and a woman who worked for a television production company, were seriously injured by a machete-type weapon, police said. Prime Minister Jean Castex told reporters at the scene, near Boulevard Richard-Lenoir, that their lives were not in danger.

The attack came as a high-profile trial was underway against 14 people accused of helping two jihadists carry out the 2015 attack on Charlie Hebdo, in which 12 people were killed.

Since then, the magazine has moved to a secret location.

In an interview with France 2 broadcaster, Darmanin described the stabbing as “a new bloody attack against our country, against journalists.”

“It is the street where Charlie Hebdo used to be. This is how Islamist terrorists operate,” the interior minister said.

He said he had ordered security at synagogues to be heightened this weekend for Yom Kippur, the holiest day on the Jewish calendar.

The main suspect has not been identified, but Darmanin said he arrived in the country three years ago “as an isolated minor” of Pakistani nationality.

The minister added that the suspect was not known to be radicalized, but had a prior arrest for carrying a screwdriver.

Colleagues of the victims said they were outside the Premieres Lignes news production agency smoking a cigarette when they were attacked.

“I went to the window and saw a colleague, bloodied, chased by a man with a machete,” said an employee, who asked not to be identified.

“They were both seriously injured,” Paul Moreira, founder and co-director of Premieres Lignes, told AFP news agency.

Police quickly sealed off the area and a blade, described as a machete or butcher knife, was recovered nearby.

Police later arrested the main suspect in the nearby Bastille area with blood on his clothes, authorities told the BBC.

Shortly after, a man claiming to be from Algeria was also arrested. A few hours later, three men of Pakistani origin were arrested during a search at one of the main suspect’s suspected homes in the northeastern suburb of Pantin, Le Figaro reported.