(JTA) — One year after a wave of attacks by Islamists killed 17 in Paris, including four at a kosher supermarket, police in the French capital shot and killed a knife-wielding man shouting “God is great” in Arabic.
Police opened fire on the man, who tried to enter a northern Paris police station on Thursday, because of his shouted declaration and he had wires protruding from his body, police officials told Reuters. The assailant was wearing what was discovered to be a fake suicide bomb belt and carrying an emblem of the Islamic State group, according to reports.
The thwarted attack came on the one-year anniversary of the terrorist shootings at the Charlie Hebdo satirical magazine, which killed 12. The siege of the Hyper Cacher market came two days later.
Shortly before the thwarted attack, French President Francois Hollande finished speaking at a memorial event at police headquarters in central Paris honoring officers killed in the January 2015 attacks, as well as those last November on several sites around Paris for which the Islamic State took credit. Some 130 people were killed in the coordinated November attacks.
The Islamic State said the 18th district, where the police station is located, had been on its hit list for the Nov. 13, 2015 attacks.
“Terrorism has not stopped posing a threat to our country,” Hollande said in his speech.
JTA has documented Jewish history in real-time for over a century. Keep our journalism strong by joining us in supporting independent, award-winning reporting.
