PARIS - A man armed with a baseball bat attacked worshippers at a mosque in France on Friday, killing one person and seriously wounding another, police said.
The suspected assailant was held after the incident in the northern city of Arras near the Belgian border, and was described by police sources as having a history of psychiatric problems. “He is a young Muslim who attended the mosque and was known as someone unbalanced,” Abdelkader Assouedj, regional representative for the Federation of the Grand Mosque of Paris, told AFP.
He said the man had been asked not to return to the mosque because of his ‘odd behaviour’ during prayers but had turned up on Friday. “The first indications I have is that it is the act of a person who had a psychiatric history,” Interior Minister Claude Gueant told AFP, describing the attack as an act of ‘incredible brutality’. According to Reuters, the attacker, who was identified as a 32-year-old French man of Moroccan origin, was being questioned by police.