The mobilization announcement came on Saturday after President Macron held an emergency meeting of the security cabinet on Friday evening.
France mobilized seven thousand soldiers and raised its alert to the level of an “emergency attack” after a teacher was stabbed to death in the northeastern town of Arras on Friday by a former student with a history of Islamic extremism.
President Emmanuel Macron took this decision after holding an emergency meeting of his security cabinet on Friday evening.
Macron described the stabbing attack, which seriously injured two other school employees, as “Islamic terrorism.”
The Elysee Palace said on Saturday morning that the president had ordered “the dispatch of up to 7,000 soldiers from the guard force, who will be deployed from now until Monday evening until further notice.”
What happened in Arras?
French authorities opened anti-terrorism investigations after the Arras attack.
Local police say that a man armed with a knife killed a teacher and wounded two other people at a high school in the town, which has a population of about 41,000 people, on Friday morning. The attacker was arrested at the scene.
The incident occurred at Gambetta Secondary School, which is located in the city centre, and police say the attacker shouted “Allahu Akbar” in Arabic.
His name has been revealed as 18-year-old Muhammed Mogoshkov, a former student of the school of Chechen origin who was the subject of “active surveillance” by France’s Directorate General of Internal Security (DGSI).
Mogoshkgov was stopped and searched last week but was released because there was no reason to detain him, officials said.
No high school students were injured in the attack, but a security guard and a teacher were seriously injured after suffering multiple stab wounds.
Macron visits the place and holds a meeting of the security cabinet
French President Emmanuel Macron visited the school on Friday afternoon and called on people to remain “united” and “stand together” in the face of the “barbarism of Islamic terrorism.”
Speaking in the courtyard of a building near the school where the deadly attack occurred on Friday morning, Macron said: “The choice has been made not to surrender to terrorism, and not to allow anything to divide us.”
Later on Friday evening, Macron held an emergency meeting of his security cabinet in Paris.
Senior government ministers and officials from the police, army and intelligence attended the meeting, which came after a second security incident was confirmed.
A 24-year-old man known to be an “extremist” was arrested and taken into police custody for carrying a knife while leaving a mosque in Limay, on the outskirts of Paris.
The Versailles prosecutor’s office confirmed the man’s arrest.
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