France Attack: Car Rams into Soldiers Outside Paris, Six Injured

Local Editor

A source in the French judiciary said counter-terrorist investigators had been asked to probe an incident in which a car rammed into a group of soldiers in a Paris suburb on Wednesday.

A judicial source told Reuters that the department had taken up the matter and was working alongside colleagues from the DGSI internal intelligence agency - a move that in France shows the matter is being treated as a probable act of terrorism.

French police launched a manhunt on Wednesday after a car rammed into soldiers near their barracks outside Paris, injuring six people, two of them seriously.

Police were scrambling to track down the vehicle, which took off after the incident described by local mayor Patrick Balkany as "without a doubt a deliberate act."

The incident took place at about 8 a.m. local time outside a military barracks in the northwestern Paris suburb of Levallois-Perret.

Balkany told the all-news channel BFMTV that the car "accelerated very fast when they [soldiers] were coming out" of the barracks.

France had been under a state of emergency since November 2015 and has seen a string of attacks on security forces, particularly those guarding key tourist sites.

On Saturday an 18-year-old with a history of psychological problems was arrested on Saturday at the Eiffel Tower after brandishing a knife.

He told investigators he wanted to kill a soldier, sources close to the case told AFP.

In the bloodiest attack targeting France, 130 people were killed in a wave of shootings and bombings in Paris on November 13, 2015, in carnage claimed by the Wahhabi Daesh [Arabic acronym for "ISIS" / "ISIL"].

Source: News Agencies, Edited by website team