Four young children who were stabbed in a park in France on Thursday are now in stable condition, BBC reports.
The children, aged between one and three, are recovering in hospital following the attack.
Abdelmasih Hanoun, 31, faces attempted murder charges following the assaults by Lake Annecy, in the Alps, on Thursday morning.
He first targeted two French cousins named Ennio and Alba, both two, and then attacked Ettie, a three-year-old English girl on holiday with her parents.
Peter, a 22-month-old Dutch boy, was also attacked by the suspect.
On Friday, Ennio and Alba remained in hospital in the nearby city of Grenoble, where their condition was described as ‘critical’.
Ettie was in the same hospital where her condition was described as ‘stable’, while Peter was also confirmed to be ‘stable’ having been transferred to a specialist medical unit in Geneva.
Two adults were also slashed with a knife by Hanoun – Manuel, 70, and Yusuf, 78, who was also hit by police bullet in error.
Line Bonnet-Mathis, the Annecy Prosecutor who is leading the investigation into the crimes, said: ‘We are dealing with very young victims whose state of health is still extremely fragile. All are in intensive care.’
Hanoun himself was also treated after being shot by police before his arrest, but was still well enough to talk to officers.
The assailant described himself as a ‘Syrian-Christian’, who was filmed saying ‘In the name of Jesus Christ’ throughout the attack, said an investigating source.
The divorced father of a three-year-old girl was refused asylum in France six days ago and faced being deported.
Despite this, he had been sleeping rough in Annecy, with no attempt by the authorities to monitor his movements.
Gérald Darmanin, France’s interior minister, said this was a ‘troubling coincidence’, adding: ‘For reasons not well explained he had sought asylum in Switzerland, Italy and France.’
Hanoun arrived in Sweden 10 years ago, having served in the Syrian Army during the country’s ongoing civil war.
He married a Swedish woman he had met in Turkey, and they went on to have a daughter, now aged three, before the couple separated around eight months ago.
A woman who identified as his ex-wife later told French TV that her former partner was a Christian.
‘He does not call me for four months. [Our relationship] stopped because we lived in Sweden and he did not want to live in Sweden anymore,’ she said, adding that he had not previously shown a violent streak.
Hanoun was twice refused Swedish citizenship, and this is thought to have motivated him to move to France alone.
The multiple stabbings follow a series of similar crimes in France dating back to 2015, most of them linked to Islamist terrorism.
There were no early indications as to the motive of the latest attack, said Ms Bonet-Mathis.
Get in touch with our news team by emailing us at [email protected].
For more stories like this, check our news page.
Get your need-to-know
latest news, feel-good stories, analysis and more
Denial of responsibility! insideheadline is an automatic aggregator around the global media. All the content are available free on Internet. We have just arranged it in one platform for educational purpose only. In each content, the hyperlink to the primary source is specified. All trademarks belong to their rightful owners, all materials to their authors. If you are the owner of the content and do not want us to publish your materials on our website, please contact us by email – [email protected]. The content will be deleted within 24 hours.
