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Thursday, May 22, 2025

Child victims of stabbing attack in France in critical but stable condition, president visits

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712 days ago
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Flowers lay at the playground after a knife attack Thursday, June 8, 2023 in Annecy, French Alps. A a man with a knife stabbed four young children at a lakeside park in the French Alps on Thursday, assaulting at least one in a stroller repeatedly. The children between 22 months and 3 years old suffered life-threatening injuries, and two adults also were wounded, authorities said. (AP Photo/Laurent Cipriani)

Flowers lay at the playground after a knife attack Thursday, June 8, 2023 in Annecy, French Alps. A a man with a knife stabbed four young children at a lakeside park in the French Alps on Thursday, assaulting at least one in a stroller repeatedly. The children between 22 months and 3 years old suffered life-threatening injuries, and two adults also were wounded, authorities said. (AP Photo/Laurent Cipriani)

France’s pres­i­dent trav­elled Fri­day to the side of fam­i­lies trau­ma­tized by the sav­age stab­bings of four very young chil­dren, all said to be in sta­ble con­di­tion af­ter emer­gency surgery, while in­ves­ti­ga­tors worked to un­rav­el the mo­tives of a Syr­i­an man tak­en in­to cus­tody.

Pres­i­dent Em­manuel Macron and his wife Brigitte trav­elled to­geth­er to a hos­pi­tal treat­ing three of the four chil­dren who suf­fered life-threat­en­ing knife wounds in Thurs­day’s still un­ex­plained at­tack in and around a play park in the Alpine city of An­necy.

Macron’s prime min­is­ter, Elis­a­beth Borne, said all four chil­dren — aged be­tween 22 months and 3 years — un­der­went surgery and “are un­der con­stant med­ical sur­veil­lance.”

“Their sit­u­a­tion is sta­ble,” she said.

Gov­ern­ment spokesman Olivi­er Ve­r­an, a med­ical doc­tor by train­ing, said two of the chil­dren re­main in crit­i­cal con­di­tion.

Most of the chil­dren were rushed af­ter the at­tack to a hos­pi­tal in the French Alpine city of Greno­ble — the first stop for Macron and his wife on Fri­day morn­ing. They did not speak to re­porters as they went in­side.

The fourth in­jured child was be­ing treat­ed in Gene­va, in neigh­bour­ing Switzer­land.

Two of the four chil­dren are French and the oth­er two were tourists — one British, the oth­er Dutch.

Two adults al­so suf­fered knife wounds — life-threat­en­ing for one of them, au­thor­i­ties said. One of the adults was in­jured both with a knife and by a shot fired by po­lice as they were de­tain­ing the sus­pect­ed at­tack­er.

The sus­pect, a 31-year-old Syr­i­an with refugee sta­tus in Swe­den, re­mains in cus­tody. Psy­chi­a­trists are eval­u­at­ing him, Ve­r­an said.

The help­less­ness of the young vic­tims and the sav­agery of the at­tack sick­ened France and drew in­ter­na­tion­al con­dem­na­tion.

French au­thor­i­ties said the sus­pect had re­cent­ly been re­fused asy­lum in France be­cause Swe­den had al­ready grant­ed him per­ma­nent res­i­den­cy and refugee sta­tus a decade ago.

Lead pros­e­cu­tor Line Bon­net-Math­is said the man’s mo­tives were un­known but did not ap­pear to be ter­ror­ism-re­lat­ed. He was armed with a fold­ing knife, she said.

PARIS (AP) —

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