Car hits soldiers outside Paris, six injured: police

PARIS: A car hit soldiers on patrol outside Paris on Wednesday, injuring six people, two of them seriously, police said.

The vehicle took off after the incident, which took place at about 8:00 am (0600 GMT) in the northwestern suburb of Levallois-Perret.

Police described the incident as an “apparently deliberate act”.

The anti-terrorism unit of the Paris prosecutors’ office has launched a probe into the car-ramming incident that injured six soldiers outside their barracks.

A probe has been ordered into “attempted killings… in relation to a terrorist undertaking”, Paris prosecutors said in a statement.

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

An 18-year-old with a history of psychological problems was arrested on Saturday at the Eiffel Tower after brandishing a knife and shouting “Allahu Akbar” (God is Greatest).

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

In February, a man armed with a machete attacked four soldiers on patrol at Paris’s Louvre Museum, while in April another extremist shot and killed a policeman on the Champs Elysees.

In June, a 40-year-old Algeria doctorate student who had pledged allegiance to the Islamic State group attacked a policeman with a hammer outside Notre Dame cathedral.