ISIS claimed responsibility for a Saturday evening knife attack in Paris that killed one person just a few days before the start of Ramadan, the Islamic holy month during which terrorists are told they’ll receive extra spiritual reward for conducting attacks.
The attacker reportedly shouted “Allahu akbar” as he randomly stabbed people on the street and at a restaurant in an area teeming with nightlife near the city’s opera house. Police shot and killed the stabber.
A 29-year-old man was killed. Four people were injured, two seriously, but all are expected to survive.
France24 reported that police have identified the assailant as a Chechen born in the Russian republic in 1997. The man’s parents were reportedly brought in for questioning.
“According to a security source at the Amaq agency, the author of the knife attack in the city of Paris is a soldier of the Islamic State; he led the operation in response to calls to target the coalition countries,” said the ISIS statement, not offering any other information.
French President Emmanuel Macron tweeted late Saturday, “All my thoughts go to the victims and the wounded of the knife attack perpetrated tonight in Paris, as well as to their relatives. I salute on behalf of all the French the courage of the policemen who have neutralized the terrorist.”
“France once again paid the price of blood but did not give an inch to the enemies of Freedom,” he added.
In March, a pro-ISIS group that has been issuing a wave of graphic messages this year to instigate would-be jihadists in the West to commit attacks issued a new poster with the image of Bataclan killer Abu Qital al-Faransi and his exhortation to smash disbelievers’ heads with rocks.
The French terrorist who was part of the 2015 Paris attacks, real name Samy Amimour, recorded a video that was released two months after the coordinated attacks.
“And by Allah, we will fight you – with Allah’s permission – in the heart of Paris and at the corner of the Eiffel Tower,” Amimour vowed in the video.
He criticized those living in France who “claim to be Muslims” yet don’t fight.
“We are being killed every day and you are sitting there idly, living among them, sleeping among them, eating with them, with these disbelievers, while it is within your ability to display some honor and spit in their faces – if you can’t find a weapon – or smash their heads with a rock, or run them over with your car and terrorize them,” Amimour said.
The poster from the media group calling itself Muharar al-Ansar, distributed in online ISIS haunts including on Telegram, showed Amimour’s face and displayed his quotes, along with a declaration that “the Islamic State has emerged from the blood of the just” and a directive for Muslims in the West to “ANSWER THE CALL and join the caravan of martyrs.”
In February, pro-ISIS group Al-Abd al-Faqir Media declared “Paris before Rome” and depicted a terrorist invasion that began with cells in the countryside outside Paris before attacking the city.
To show the Eiffel Tower being destroyed and falling to the ground, the filmmakers ripped off footage from the 2009 movie “G.I. Joe: The Rise of Cobra.”
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