PARIS. Terror at the Gare du Nord, one of the main train stations in Paris: in the middle of the afternoon a man, an asylum seeker in his thirties who was waiting for his train on a platform, was approached and hit in the throat with a knife. And he is in very serious condition in the hospital. The attacker, on the other hand, is on the run and for now no one is unbalanced on the possible matrix of the attack while the French interior minister Gerald Darmanin assured – in a tweet shortly after the episode – that ‘The National Police is mobilized to identify and arrest the perpetrator of the assault. “I am following the situation in contact with the Prefecture of Paris”, added the minister.
The attacker had been noticed by several witnesses because he had been wandering around the station premises for some time. It is a man with “European” features who wore a blue t-shirt and an anti-coronavirus mask at the time of the attack. He managed to escape and a manhunt is now underway, especially in the arrondissements near the station. The victim is a 32-year-old Afghan asylum seeker who struggles between life and death in the hospital where he arrived in very serious condition and remains on a confidential prognosis. He was hit hard with a kitchen knife and sustained a wound that affected the jugular vein, “from the chin to the ear,” according to health sources.
The images and videos posted by witnesses on social networks show a gruesome scene: the man on the ground after being hit in a pool of blood while receiving first aid. For the moment – police sources point out – there is no track that can explain the motive for the attack. But the investigation was entrusted to the Paris judicial police and not to the anti-terrorism section. Gare du Nord, located in a very busy district of Paris, is the station from where high-speed trains leave for the north, especially the Eurostar to London and the Thalys to Brussels.
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