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Paris knife attack to be treated as terrorist attack: Official

“Investigations over the past few hours have allowed us to establish that he was certainly radicalised (and to show)… organised preparation for his move towards the act,” the statement further said.

Paris knife attack to be treated as terrorist attack: Official

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French anti-terrorist investigators said on Saturday they have taken over the probe into an attack by a knife-wielding man who left one person dead, walking with his wife in a park south of Paris before being shot dead by police.

According to the police, the man, identified as 22-year-old Nathan C., attacked several people in the suburb of Villejuif and they initially treated the incident as a criminal not terrorist incident.

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But in a statement, the French national anti-terrorist investigation body (PNAT) said that while Nathan C. was known to have had psychiatric problems, worrying evidence had also emerged about his conversion to Islam and radicalisation.

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“Investigations over the past few hours have allowed us to establish that he was certainly radicalised (and to show)… organised preparation for his move towards the act,” the statement further said.

Additionally, they “showed a murderous path, thought out and chosen, of such a nature as to gravely disturb public order by intimidation or terror,” it said.

In October, four people were stabbed to death at the Paris police headquarters by an IT specialist working for the police.

Prosecutors said that attacker, who was shot dead by police, had come under the sway of terrorists.

In 2017, a gunman opened fire on a police van that killed one officer and injured two others,

Later, the Islamic State (IS) terror group had claimed responsibility for the shooting.

France has been under a state of emergency since November 2015, when more than 130 people were killed in a single night by coordinated terrorist attacks in Paris.

(With inputs from agency)

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