France has announced the deployment of 7,000 soldiers in response to a fatal stabbing incident involving a teacher by a suspect of Chechen origin. The attack took place in the town of Arras in
northeastern France and resulted in the death of a teacher, with three others severely wounded. The suspected attacker, Mohammed Moguchkov, shouted "Allahu Akbar" during the incident, suggesting a probable link to ongoing violence in the Middle East. French President Emmanuel Macron described the attack as an act of "Islamist terror."
The soldiers will be deployed as part of Operation Sentinelle, a French military operation involving 10,000 soldiers and 4,700 police and gendarmes aimed at protecting sensitive areas of the country from terrorism. The deployment will be completed by Monday evening.
The attacker, Moguchkov, is a man in his 20s from Russia's mainly Muslim southern Caucasus region of Chechnya. He was already on a French national security watchlist known as "Fiche S" and was under surveillance by France's domestic intelligence agency, the DGSI.
The victim, a French teacher, was fatally stabbed, while others, including a school security guard and a teacher, were wounded. A cleaner was also hurt. Fortunately, no students at the school were injured in the attack.
France has experienced a series of attacks by Islamist extremists since 2015, including the November 2015 attacks in Paris, claimed by the Islamic State (IS) group, which resulted in the deaths of 130 people.
In response to the incident, Macron called for unity and solidarity among the French people, emphasizing the need to stand together. He also reinforced security measures at religious and cultural facilities in France, and French Education Minister Gabriel Attal called for immediate reinforcement of security at schools.
The attack comes almost three years after the beheading of teacher Samuel Paty on October 16, 2020, near his school in a Paris suburb, also by a man of Chechen origin. Photo by Alex Proimos from Sydney, Australia, Wikimedia commons.