PARIS: A knife-wielding man attacked a soldier in Paris on Friday, the latest assault to raise questions over whether France’s anti-terror patrols are a target for extremists.
The soldier, who was part of an anti-terrorism operation known as Sentinelle, rapidly tackled the man and was uninjured. The attacker was taken into custody.
The man had lunged at the soldier at the central Chatelet metro station around 6.30 am (0430 GMT), making reference to Allah, a police source said. The attacker was not previously known to police.
Investigators have opened an anti-terror probe, government spokesman Christophe Castaner said.
The incident came with France still on high alert following a string of terror attacks which began in January 2015 when jihadist gunmen stormed the offices of satirical weekly Charlie Hebdo, killing 12.
The government launched Operation Sentinelle after that attack, deploying some 7,000 troops across the country to guard high-risk areas such as tourist sites and religious buildings.
Since then the troops have been attacked seven times, including last month when a man rammed a car into a group of soldiers in the Paris suburbs, injuring six.
Though much smaller in scale than the 2015 Islamic State attacks in Paris and last year’s truck attack in Nice, the repeated assaults on soldiers have sparked criticism that their patrols have become a target.
But defense minister Florence Parly said the fact that the attacker was swiftly brought under control Friday was “proof of the professionalism and efficiency of the Sentinelle soldiers in their mission to protect.”
“We do not know the intentions of the attacker,” she told Europe 1 radio.
In February, a 29-year-old Egyptian brandishing machetes in each hand attacked four soldiers patrolling near the Louvre museum in Paris, shouting “Allahu akbar” (God is greatest).
In March, a man was shot dead at the capital’s Orly airport after attacking troops.
Friday’s attack came a day after Interior Minister Gerard Collomb said the Sentinelle operation would “evolve” but ruled out cuts to troop numbers.
“We want to redeploy it to do better against the threat we are facing today,” Collomb said, adding there would be changes to the way the force is organized.
The military has already shifted toward mobile patrols and away from posting troops outside buildings on permanent watch.
Critics argue that the patrols have done little to increase security and that troops are placed at unnecessary risk for an operation largely aimed at reassuring the public.
They also point to the strain it puts on an army that has 10,000 troops active abroad, including 4,000 fighting jihadism in west Africa.
Knife-wielding man attacks soldier in Paris
Knife-wielding man attacks soldier in Paris
Only 4% women on ballot as Bangladesh prepares for post-Hasina vote
- Women PMs have ruled Bangladesh for over half of its independent history
- For 2026 vote, only 20 out of 51 political parties nominated female candidates
DHAKA: As Bangladesh prepares for the first election since the ouster of its long-serving ex-prime minister Sheikh Hasina, only 4 percent of the registered candidates are women, as more than half of the political parties did not field female candidates.
The vote on Feb. 12 will bring in new leadership after an 18-month rule of the caretaker administration that took control following the student-led uprising that ended 15 years in power of Hasina’s Awami League party.
Nearly 128 million Bangladeshis will head to the polls, but while more than 62 million of them are women, the percentage of female candidates in the race is incomparably lower, despite last year’s consensus reached by political parties to have at least 5 percent women on their lists.
According to the Election Commission, among 1,981 candidates only 81 are women, in a country that in its 54 years of independence had for 32 years been led by women prime ministers — Hasina and her late rival Khaleda Zia.
According to Dr. Rasheda Rawnak Khan from the Department of Anthropology at Dhaka University, women’s political participation was neither reflected by the rule of Hasina nor Zia.
“Bangladesh has had women rulers, not women’s rule,” Khan told Arab News. “The structure of party politics in Bangladesh is deeply patriarchal.”
Only 20 out of 51 political parties nominated female candidates for the 2026 vote. Percentage-wise, the Bangladesh Socialist Party was leading with nine women, or 34 percent of its candidates.
The election’s main contender, the Bangladesh Nationalist Party, whose former leader Zia in 1991 became the second woman prime minister of a predominantly Muslim nation — after Pakistan’s Benazir Bhutto — was the party that last year put forward the 5 percent quota for women.
For the upcoming vote, however, it ended up nominating only 10 women, or 3.5 percent of its 288 candidates.
The second-largest party, Jamaat-e-Islami, has not nominated a single woman.
The 4 percent participation is lower than in the previous election in 2024, when it was slightly above 5 percent, but there was no decreasing trend. In 2019, the rate was 5.9 percent, and 4 percent in 2014.
“We have not seen any independent women’s political movement or institutional activities earlier, from where women could now participate in the election independently,” Khan said.
“Real political participation is different and difficult as well in this patriarchal society, where we need to establish internal party democracy, protection from political violence, ensure direct election, and cultural shifts around female leadership.”
While the 2024 student-led uprising featured a prominent presence of women activists, Election Commission data shows that this has not translated into their political participation, with very few women contesting the upcoming polls.
“In the student movement, women were recruited because they were useful, presentable for rallies and protests both on campus and in the field of political legitimacy. Women were kept at the forefront for exhibiting some sort of ‘inclusive’ images to the media and the people,” Khan said.
“To become a candidate in the general election, one needs to have a powerful mentor, money, muscle power, control over party people, activists, and locals. Within the male-dominated networks, it’s very difficult for women to get all these things.”
