At least six people were injured in an attack at Paris’ Gare Du Nord train station early Wednesday, restricting access to one of the French capital’s major rail hubs.
An individual began attacking people at 6:42 a.m. local time and was neutralized a minute later, according to French Interior Minister Gerald Darmanin. The individual was disarmed by off-duty police officers who were going home and by border police, Darmanin said in a press conference.
The attacker made the weapon himself, Darmanin added. Paris police had earlier said the individual started attacking people with a knife at 6:45 a.m. local time.
Several police officers opened fire, including a security agent working for rail operator SNCF, police said. Multiple shots were fired and the alleged attacker was injured.
A spokesman for the Paris Prosecutor’s Office said six people were injured, including a member of the French border police. One of the injured is in critical condition. The suspect is also in a critical condition, the spokesman said.
The motive for the knife attack is unknown, according to the Paris Prosecutor’s Office.
French Interior Minister Gerald Darmanin (third left) and Paris Police Prefect Laurent Nunez (second left) arrive at Gare du Nord, after several people were wounded during an attack at the train station.
The French national Anti-Terrorism Prosecutor’s Office said it is “evaluating the facts” about the attack, but has not yet taken the case. The fact that the suspected attacker was injured may lengthen the time it will take to evaluate the facts about the case, the office added.
Darmanin arrived at Gare du Nord soon after the attack Wednesday morning. Earlier, he wrote on Twitter that the alleged attacker had injured several people before being “quickly neutralized.”
“Thankful to the police for their effective and courageous response,” Darmanin tweeted.
CNN affiliate BFMTV interviewed one woman, identified only as Lili, who witnessed the attack and helped injured victims.
“My friends and I were going on holiday this morning and we were at the entrance of the station when we heard people yelling,” she said.
“We saw two people on the ground. One was hitting the other. People tried to pull them apart and that’s when the attacker pulled out his weapon. People started yelling ‘knife!’ and began running away. I helped the first victim who had been attacked and I got the impression that the individual was attacking all the people who tried to get near him and overpower him.
“I helped the injured person who had been attacked and was in a state of shock. I brought them to the police and I then tried to find my friends and that’s when we heard the gunshots. The armed forces responded very quickly to the attack. It didn’t even last five minutes even though it felt like an eternity to me.
“We are all shocked by what we saw. We were two meters away. It could have been one of us because we were so close. It’s very traumatic.”
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A few hundred people coalesced in the main concourse of the Gare Du Nord station, many looking for information about trains following the attack, according to CNN’s team at the station.
Several dozen police officers were posted around a security perimeter that blocked off a large portion of the station’s main concourse, blocking access to several intercity train platforms, according to CNN’s team. Access to the Eurostar terminal has since reopened, after it was cut off for several hours.
Police screens hid the scene of the attack from view but police officers could be seen collecting evidence in paper bags.
French police stand guard in a cordonned off area at Gare du Nord station, where an attack cut off access to major train services.
While residents of Paris had begun to relax after several years of heightened tensions around terror attacks, Wednesday’s incident, which currently is not being investigated as terror-related by French authorities, is the second in two months. In December, a man who was being investigated at the time by Paris’ Prosecutor’s Office for racist violence shot and killed three Kurdish activists in the north of Paris.
Even so, the atmosphere at Gare du Nord was calm Wednesday around lunchtime and passengers seemed hopeful of being able to catch their trains.
