A French soldier shot and wounded a man armed with a machete and carrying two bags on his back on Friday as he tried to enter the Paris Louvre museum in what police said looked like a terrorist attack.
The man shouted Allahu Akbar (God is greatest) and attacked another soldier before being shot near the museum’s shopping mall, police said, adding a second person had also been detained after acting suspiciously.
The attacker was alive but seriously wounded, the head of Paris police Michel Cadot told reporters at the scene, adding the bags he had been carrying contained no explosives.
“The soldier fired five bullets,” Cadot said, describing how the man hurried threateningly towards the soldiers.
“It was an attack by a person… who represented a direct threat and whose actions suggested a terrorist context.”
An anti-terrorism inquiry has been opened, the public prosecutor said in a statement.
The identity and nationality of the attacker remains unknown for now, French Interior Ministry spokesman Pierre-Henry Brandet told reporters.
