Charlie Hebdo: Terror police investigate stabbing near former offices in Paris
Charlie Hebdo #CharlieHebdo
PARIS — French terror police have launched an investigation after two people were stabbed near the former offices of satirical magazine Charlie Hebdo in Paris, officials said Friday.
Security forces wearing camouflage and carrying long guns rushed to the scene following the “serious incident,” the Interior Ministry tweeted.
The two people confirmed injured worked for documentary film company Premieres Lignes, founder Paul Moreira told BFM television. He said they were outside on a break when a man with a “butcher’s knife” attacked them on the street, before turning to flee. He added that the company had not received any threats.
Premiere Lignes, which translates to Frontline, specializes in investigative reports and filmed part of the attack on the Charlie Hebdo offices in 2015.
“All the team at Charlie offers support and solidarity to its former neighbors and colleagues at PLTVfilms and to the people hit by this odious attack,” Charlie Hebdo tweeted shortly after the attack.
Paris Prosecutor Rémy Heitz told a news conference that two people had been arrested, although only one of them was believed to have committed the crime.
French Prime Minister Jean Castex told the same news conference that the lives of the two wounded workers are not in danger. He offered the government’s solidarity with their families and colleagues.
He had earlier tweeted that he wanted “to take stock of the situation,” as the Paris metro closed lines in the area and school children were initially kept inside in an area around the attack.
Though no longer used by Charlie Hebdo, the building in the northeast of the city was the site of an attack by Islamist gunmen that killed 12 members of the magazine’s staff in January 2015. A kosher supermarket was also attacked in a day that claimed the lives of 17 people.
Since the attack, the magazine’s staff have been subject to repeated threats and last week police took one of them from her home to a safe place due to a “concrete” threat, the police press office said.
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Fourteen people, three of whom are being tried in absentia, are currently on trial for that attack. They face charges including “complicity” in terrorist crimes and “criminal terrorist association.”
The court heard that they had sought to avenge the Prophet Mohammad, nearly a decade after the weekly published cartoons mocking him.
Earlier this month Charlie Hebdo republished controversial caricatures of the Prophet Muhammad to mark the start of the trial.
Nancy Ing reported from Paris and Alexander Smith from London.
The Associated Press contributed to this report.
Nancy Ing