Two French soldiers were wounded in a knife attack outside a Jewish cultural centre in the southern city of Nice today, the interior ministry said in a statement.
France introduced additional security measures including protection for Jewish institutions in response to militant islamist attacks in Paris in January which killed 17 people.
One soldier who was guarding the cultural centre was attacked by a man with a knife. Two other soldiers patrolling the area intervened and one of them was also hurt. Both suffered slight wounds, one to the cheek, the other to the arm.
The attacker and a second man were arrested.
«It seems like a premeditated and quite violent act,» said regional police chief Marcel Autier.
«The person responsible, who is in his thirties and from the Paris region, is known to police,» Interior Minister Bernard Cazeneuve said.
About 10,500 soldiers have been deployed across France to beef up security.
Christian Estrosi, the mayor of Nice told France Inter radio, that the attacker had just been stopped on a tram for not having paid for a ticket.
«He paid his fine, but refused to show his identity papers. He got out suddenly near the soldiers and with a sharp knife struck the cheek of one and arm of another,» he said.
Earlier today, French anti-terrorism police arrested eight people on suspicion of being part of a network linked to recruiting young people for jihad in Syria, Interior Minister Bernard Cazeneuve said.
The suspects, who can be held for up to 96 hours without charge, were arrested in the northern suburbs of Paris and the Lyon region, he said, according to remarks published on the ministry’s Twitter feed.
«They are now in the hands of the police. It is a Syria issue,» an official at the Paris prosecutor’s office said.
The government estimates that about 1,300 French citizens have links to recruitment cells for Syria and Iraq, of which about 400 are already fighting alongside militants.
The arrests come after President Francois Hollande’s Socialist government unveiled a raft of new security measures in response to attacks in Paris in January by homegrown Islamist militants in which 20 people were killed, including the three attackers.
Source: Buenos Aires Herald