An attacker has stabbed at least six people in a rampage through northern Paris near the Eurostar station Gare du Nord, according to reports.
At least six people have been wounded in the attack on Tuesday morning in Rue Marx-Dormoy in the city’s 18th arrondissement.
Those stabbed were rushed to hospital for treatment and a male suspect has been arrested and was held in police custody overnight.
Police would not say if the assault was a terror attack, while French media described it as a “drunken” rampage by an “unstable individual”.
All the police patrols in the north of Paris were deployed according to French daily, Le Parisien.
Several passersby, on the Marx-Dormoy street which is right in the middle of the ZSP (priority security zone), were stabbed “randomly” by the attacker.
The attacker escaped on foot after wounding five people, and a sixth person escaped unharmed, reportedly protected by thick winter clothing.
Police quickly launched a major manhunt after looking at surveillance CCTV cameras. They tracked him down as he was taking refuge in the entrance of a building on Rue Philippe-de-Girard in the 10th arrondissement.
When police finally detained the man, officers said the suspect’s clothes was covered in blood and his knife was found in the nearby street.
Last month French police warned that violence was escalating in Paris at an alarming pace.
Some 40 violent, armed gangs are currently active in the city, with members as young as 13. Radical Islamists in recent years that have killed more than 230 people in France.
On Tuesday, another man carrying a weapon had tried to break into several schools. He was finally arrested by police officers in the afternoon in Rue de Belleville.
The armed man who tried to break into several schools in eastern Paris, was apprehended by the police in the 19th arrondissement.
The suspect was seen loitering at the entrances of several schools in eastern Paris, in the 10th, 12th, 18th, 19th and 20th arrondissement, in the morning. According to BFMTV “the man was first reported to the management of a school in the 10th district by three children”.
Alerted, a police patrol went to the scene where the sighting of the suspect was confirmed by a supervisor of the school.