SYDNEY, Australia: A chanting 29-year-old Frenchman stabbed a British woman to death and wounded two people at a backpackers’ hotel in northern Queensland, police said on Wednesday.
The man was in Australia on a valid tourist visa and had no known links to radical groups such as Daesh (Arabic acronym for Islamic State), which has urged its followers to attack civilians with knives or other readily available weapons, police said.
A 30-year-old British man was in critical condition in hospital after the attack south of the city of Townsville late on Tuesday night.
Police said they were not ruling out any motive.
“Initial inquiries indicate that comments which may be construed of being of an extremist nature were made by the alleged offender,” Queensland Police Service Deputy Commissioner Steve Gollschewski told reporters. Witnesses told police that the stabber shouted “Allahu Akbar” (God is Greatest) as he went on a stabbing spree.
“This person appears to have acted alone,” Gollschewski said. “He is a visitor to Australia and has no known local connections, however investigations are ongoing.”
About 100 people have left Australia for Syria to fight alongside organizations such as Daesh, Australia’s Immigration Minister said earlier this year.
Australia has been on heightened alert for attacks by home-grown radicals since 2014 and authorities say they have thwarted a number of plots.
The US Federal Bureau of Investigation (FBI) on Tuesday said that it was investigating a similar attack in Virginia, in which the suspect shouted the same words while attacking a man and woman with a knife. Similar attacks have recently occurred in France, Bangladesh and Germany.
There have been several “lone wolf” assaults, including a 2014 cafe siege in Sydney that left two hostages and the gunman dead. Also in 2014, police shot dead a Melbourne teenager after he stabbed two counter-terrorism officers.
In 2015, a 15-year-old boy fired on an accountant at a police headquarters in a Sydney suburb and was killed in a gunfight with police.
Police did not give details of the third person wounded in the attack, which was captured on video and witnessed by more than a dozen people. There was no ongoing threat to the community, Gollschewski said.
A dog was also killed in the attack, he added.
(Reporting by Matt Siegel; Editing by Nick Macfie)
Frenchman kills woman, wounds 2 others in Australia stabbing attack
Frenchman kills woman, wounds 2 others in Australia stabbing attack
Russian FM slams ‘brazen’ Western plan to deploy force to Ukraine
- “This is not so much about security as it is about yet another attempt, you know, a brazen one,” Lavrov said
- Moscow has repeatedly railed against the idea of Western troops being deployed to Ukraine
CAIRO: Russian Foreign Minister Sergei Lavrov on Friday slammed a European proposal to create a multinational force to police any potential peace deal in Ukraine as a “brazen” threat to Russia.
“This is not so much about security as it is about yet another attempt, you know, a brazen one... to carry out the military development of Ukrainian territory as a springboard for creating threats to the Russian Federation,” Lavrov said, during a visit to Egypt.
Leaders of Kyiv’s key European allies — including Britain, France, Germany and Italy — said this week they were ready to deploy a European-led “multinational force Ukraine” to “assist in the regeneration of Ukraine’s forces, in securing Ukraine’s skies, and in supporting safer seas, including through operating inside Ukraine.”
Moscow has repeatedly railed against the idea of Western troops being deployed to Ukraine, warning that it would consider them “legitimate targets” for Russia’s armed forces.
Ukraine is pushing for strong security guarantees if it signs up to a deal to end the four-year war, including Western military commitments that it sees as necessary to prevent Russia from invading once again.
