Marseille terror attack: Man shot dead after killing two

The attacker injured several people, according to local reports, but also killed two innocent people. He killed one woman by slitting her throat and the other was stabbed to death, a police source said.

The jihadist assailant was armed with “at least two knives” the police said.

A witness described the horrific scene of how the attacker grabbed his victim from behind and slit her throat. “She couldn’t have seen a thing,” the witness told CNews television. “She was lying in a poll blood as I ran away,” she said. “I heard two shots fired. It must have been the soldiers.”

According to the police source it could be described as a terrorist attack. After reviewing CCTV footage of the cruel knife attack, the authorities said it would be treated a as a terrorist incident. Anti-terrorism prosecutors have meanwhile taken over the investigation, The Telegraph reported.

According to an interior ministry spokesman: “Anti-terrorist prosecutors have opened an investigation and the terrorist theory is the most likely.”

A local senator urged the public to be vigilant: “At any time, in any place, the threat may return.” Police have cordoned off the area outside the French port’s main train station and evacuated the area.

The French interior minister, Gérard Collomb, is on his way to the Saint-Charles main train station in Marseille, southern France, his office announced.

After killing the two innocent women, the jihadist lunged at soldiers patrolling the station, who opened fire and killed the man. The shooting created panic with commuters fleeing the station.

Soldiers are among the thousands of armed security personnel deployed around transport hubs since the Paris terror attack of November 2015.

The soldiers who opened fire and killed the attacker, were from Operation Sentinelle, the military operation in which combat troops have been patrolling streets and protecting key sites in France.

The operation is the army’s first domestic country-wide peacetime military operation. Sentinelle was launched after the massacre at Charlie Hebdo magazine. The presence has since been increased to 10 000 troops across the country, with some 6 500 in the Paris area alone.

Since 2015, more than 230 people in France have been killed in terrorist attacks.

Even though France remains under a state of emergency, the country has been hit by a series of similar incidents, most of which have been claimed by Islamic State.