ROMANS-SUR-ISERE, FRANCE: A Sudanese refugee went on a knife rampage in a town in south-eastern France on Saturday, killing two people in what is being treated as a terrorist attack.
The attack in broad daylight, which President Emmanuel Macron called "an odious act", took place with the country on lockdown in a bid to stem the spread of the deadly coronavirus.
Counter-terrorism prosecutors have launched an investigation into "murder linked to a terrorist enterprise" after the rampage in a string of shops in Romans-sur-Isere, a riverside town with a population of about 35,000.
The assailant, identified only as Abdallah A.-O., a refugee in his 30s from Sudan who lives in the town, was arrested without a fight by police.
"He was found on his knees on the pavement praying in Arabic," the prosecutor's office said.
According to witnesses cited by local radio station France Bleu Drome Ardeche, he shouted "Allah Akbar!"(God is Greatest) as he stabbed his victims.
"Anyone who had the misfortune to find themselves in his way were attacked," town mayor Marie-Helene Thoraval told AFP.
David Olivier Reverdy, from the National Police Alliance union, said the assailant had called on police to kill him when they came to arrest him.
The suspect first went into a tobacco shop where he attacked the owner and his wife, Thoraval said.
He then went into a butcher's shop where he seized another knife before heading to the town centre and attacking people in the street outside a bakery.
"He took a knife, jumped over the counter, and stabbed a customer, then ran away," the butcher's shop owner Ludovic Breyton told AFP.
"My wife tried to help the victim but in vain."
Interior Minister Cristophe Castaner, who visited the scene, said two people were killed and five others injured.
"This morning, a man embarked on a terrorist journey," he said.
The initial investigation has "brought to light a determined, murderous course likely to seriously disturb public order through intimidation or terror", according to the national anti-terrorist prosecutor's office (PNAT).
It said that during a search of the suspect's home, "handwritten documents with religious connotations were found in which the author complains in particular that he lives in a country of non-believers".
The suspect, who obtained refugee status in 2017, was not known to police or intelligence services in France or Europe, PNAT said.
Macron denounced the attack in a statement on Twitter.
"All the light will be shed on this odious act which casts a shadow over our country which has already been hit hard in recent weeks," he said.
France is in its third week of a national lockdown over COVID-19, with all but essential businesses ordered to shut and people told to stay at home.
The country has been on terror alert since a wave of deadly jihadist bombings and shootings in Paris in 2015.
In all, 258 people have been killed in France in what have been deemed terrorist attacks.
France launches terror probe after two killed in stabbing spree
https://arab.news/2ppdz
France launches terror probe after two killed in stabbing spree
- Sudanese refugee went on a rampage in a string of shops in Romans-sur-Isere
- President Emmanuel Macron called the attack 'an odious act'
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.”
