French investigators were today interrogating a knife-wielding man who attacked three soldiers outside a Jewish centre in Nice, as questions resurfaced over security measures a month after the Paris attacks.
The attacker, identified as 30-year-old Moussa Coulibaly from the poor western suburbs of Paris, was already known to police who questioned him just days before the attack, when he was turned away from Turkey last week.
Police arrested him immediately after he knifed the soldiers in broad daylight while they were patrolling outside the Jewish centre as part of reinforced security measures introduced after last month’s jihadist attacks in Paris that left 17 people dead.
Prime Minister Manuel Valls announced that the highest security level, in place in the Paris region since the attacks, would be extended to the Alpes-Maritimes province where Nice is located.
“This attempted murder targeted soldiers because they were soldiers,” Defence Minister Jean-Yves Le Drian said during a visit to the victims’ barracks.
Two of the troops received knife wounds and a third managed to tackle the assailant to the ground.
Anti-terrorist police were focusing their investigation on whether Coulibaly had known the soldiers were protecting a Jewish centre, tucked away in a courtyard in the French Riviera city, and what his motives were.