On a tense Tuesday morning, French counter-terrorism police were compelled to resort to their firearms, wounding an unarmed woman veiled fully, following her blatant threats against occupants of a train in Paris. Ignoring police orders and refusing to cooperate, the woman instigated officers to discharge their weapons eight times, thereby escalating the situation.
The incident, which instilled fear and chaos among passengers, took place on an RER suburban train traversing the 13th district in southern Paris. With tensions running high, the passengers cried out for help, alerting the Paris authorities. In turn, law enforcement made their presence known at the Bibliothèque François-Mitterrand train station.
Raising the alarm, the woman allegedly made declarations in Arabic, denoting “God is greatest”, contributing to the surge of apprehension. “The police feared for their safety,” an insider factually stated, justifying the steps taken by the officers.
Following a shot to the abdomen, the woman, reportedly in her late thirties, is currently in a critical yet stable condition. Post-operative reports confirm her survival after undergoing surgery in a local hospital.
In an official disclosure, Laurent Nuñez, the Paris police prefect, identified the woman as a previous threat to the state’s security forces. She had been known for causing disturbances around sensitive sites in France and was suspected of planning terror attacks.
Following her past offenses, she had been subjected to institutional care on the grounds of deteriorating mental health. However, no conceivable connections of her recent actions to her history have been drawn yet. To maintain transparency, the spokesperson of the government, Olivier Véran, assured that there were body cams worn by the officers during the incident.
Authorities are now taking a deep dive into the matter, launching two distinct investigations: one probing into the woman’s actions, and the other assessing the legitimacy of the police’s use of firearms.
This concerning incident follows closely on the heels of another distressing event in northern France, wherein a teacher was brutally murdered, and two innocent civilians seriously injured in an attack. The perpetrator made the same Arabic proclamation as the veiled woman.
In response to the increasing risk to national security following these attacks, France escalated its counter-terrorism security alert to the most pressing level. The nation finds itself grappling with heightened tensions, partly due to the on-going war between Israel and Hamas.
