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French Police Arrest Knife-Wielding Man at Paris Train Station | ASHARQ AL-AWSAT English Archive 2005 -2017
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French police officers stand guard by the Eiffel tower a week after a series of deadly attacks in the French capital Paris, France, November 22, 2015. REUTERS/Eric Gaillard


A man threatened police with a knife at Gare du Nord train station in Paris on Saturday, causing panic before he was arrested, a spokesman for French rail operator SNCF said.

The SNCF spokesman said the man had approached gendarmes patrolling the train station. He was told to lie down and followed the orders before he was arrested.

The scene led panic among passengers who tried to flee the scene, a witness told Reuters, adding that trains have been delayed.

The incident occurred a day before France holds the first round of its presidential election. The country is on alert following the killing of a policeman by an extremist militant on Thursday.

A Frenchman who had pledged allegiance to terror group ISIS stabbed a police commander to death outside his home and killed his partner, who also worked for the police, in an attack the government denounced as “an abject act of terrorism”.

The attacker told police negotiators during the siege he had answered an appeal by Iraq-based ISIS chief Abu Bakr al-Baghdadi “to kill infidels at home with their families”, Molins told a news conference.