France’s great fear of being affected by the war between Israel and Hamas materialized dramatically yesterday. A young man armed with a knife killed a high school teacher and seriously injured another teacher and a security officer. The events took place at the Léon Gambetta high school in the city of Arràs, in the Pas-de-Calais department, in the north of the country.
Aware of the seriousness of the events, in a highly flammable national and international context, the President of the Republic, Emmanuel Macron, immediately traveled to Arràs, accompanied by the Ministers of Education, Gabriel Attal, and of the Interior, Gérald Darmanin .
The attacker, 20-year-old Mohamed Mogouchkov, a former student at the same school, was arrested by the police shortly after his action. His younger brother, aged 17, was also arrested, and another, who is in prison for preparing an attack on the Elysée and for apologia for terrorism, was brought to testify in case he has anything to do with what happened
The assailant was heard shouting “Allah o Akbar!” (Allah is great) as he pounced on his victims. The dead teacher, a French teacher, was stabbed in the neck and another in the chest. The two seriously injured are another teacher and a security officer. According to the president of the Hautes de France region, Xavier Bertrand, his life is not in danger.
The attacker, of Chechen origin and Russian nationality, arrived in France in 2008. He had been registered as an extremist for only 11 days and the police followed him physically and tapped his phone. As it transpired, the day before yesterday it was the subject of a control, but no danger was perceived or any sign that it was preparing to go into action.
Although it has not been verified that the attack has a direct relationship with the war unleashed between Israel and Hamas, it is likely that this is the case. Macron himself mentioned “the context that everyone knows” when he explained the circumstances of the drama. The National Anti-Terrorist Prosecutor’s Office is handling the investigation, which leaves no doubt that it was a jihadist act.
In his first statements after speaking with the institute’s leaders and the local authorities, Macron condemned “the barbarism of Islamist terrorism” and described the murder as “savage and cowardly”. The president said that just yesterday another attack had been prevented, but he did not specify where or give details. Shortly after, various media, such as the LCI channel, reported the arrest of an individual, identified as an extremist, who, armed with a knife, near a mosque, was chasing a group of schoolchildren in Limay, in the department of Yvelines, west of Paris.
Macron called to stand up and stand firm in the face of “obscurantism”, and highlighted the courage of the wounded, who confronted the terrorist, and the speed of the police, who arrived at the school four minutes later of the distress call.
The French Government was very concerned about the import of the Gaza conflict, since France is the European country with the most important Jewish community and, at the same time, the French and immigrants of the Muslim faith add up to millions of people, a potentially very dangerous scenario. The wave of jihadist attacks that began with the massacre at the editorial office of the satirical weekly Charlie Hebdo, in January 2015, and continued with the Bataclan party hall, the mass attack in Nice and other large-scale actions, it caused a trauma in society that has not been overcome. In a televised address on Thursday night, Macron called for national unity in the face of this moment of so much tension and offered maximum protection to the Jewish community and places of worship.
The deadly attack in Arràs took place a few days before the third anniversary of the brutal murder of teacher Samuel Paty in a school on the outskirts of Paris. Paty’s killer, whom he beheaded, was also a young man of Chechen origin, only 18 years old, who criticized the teacher for showing a caricature of Muhammad in class.
Representatives of the teaching unions expressed their dismay at the new atrocious death of a teacher and the alarm among teachers, a group in which resignations from the profession abound.
The National Assembly suspended the session when the news of the attack became known. Once it resumed, the deputies observed a minute’s silence. The head of ranks of The Republicans (LR, right), Éric Ciotti, asked Macron to decree the state of emergency.
