Paris pizzeria attack 'deliberate but not terror-related'

A 13-year-old girl was killed and five people critically injured when a man drove his car into a pizzeria on the outskirts of Paris on Monday night. The girl's brother is among the wounded.

"The driver, who French police said appeared to have been acting deliberately, rammed into the terrace of the restaurant in a shopping area at Sept-Sorts, a small suburb 34 miles (55km) to the east of Paris," The Guardian reports.

The man, driving a BMW, "accelerated toward them" as they sat at the outdoor terrace of Pizzeria Cesena, says the Toronto Sun.

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"There is no doubt that he voluntarily decided to create what happened," prosecutor Eric de Valroger told reporters at the scene of the incident. He said the crash was deliberate but not terror-related.

A police source told Reuters the driver "lived in a neighbouring village" and "had tried to commit suicide on Sunday".

Paris police arrest man over BMW 'terror attack'

9 August

Police in northern France have shot and arrested a man following an attack on soldiers at a military barracks in Paris this morning.

A BMW rammed into six soldiers, seriously injuring three, in what officials are investigating as a terrorism incident.

An inquiry is underway into "attempted killings... in relation to a terrorist undertaking", French prosecutors said.

A manhunt was launched after the driver sped off, but according to The Guardian, police captured the suspect on a motorway between Boulogne-sur-Mer and Calais.

French Prime Minister Edouard Philippe said the man was driving the BMW used in the attack but gave no other details.

Witnesses claim the driver had acted alone this morning and had waited "in a cul-de-sac before the incident", the Daily Express reports.

Patrick Balkany, mayor of the north-western suburb of Levallois-Perret, where the attack occurred, described it as "without doubt a deliberate act".

He told news channel BFMTV that the car "accelerated very fast when [the soldiers] were coming out" of the barracks. The soldiers were members of the 35th infantry regiment.

The attack comes after an 18-year-old was arrested at the Eiffel Tower on Saturday for brandishing a knife and shouting "Allahu Akbar". He told investigators he wanted to kill a soldier, AFP says.

France has been under a state of emergency for almost two years and has seen a string of attacks on security forces.

One dead after car rams police van in Paris

20 June

A driver has died after deliberately ramming a police van on the Champs Elysees in Paris, in what French interior minister Gerard Collomb said was an "attempted attack".

Officials told French media that weapons, including a Kalashnikov rifle and handguns, as well as "gas canisters" were found in the car.

"The attacker was a 31-year-old French national from the Paris suburb of Argenteuil whose name was on a terror watchlist because of his known links with suspected extremists," The Guardian says.

Footage of the incident on social media shows the immediate aftermath of the car ramming the police van.

Clouds of orange and white smoke can be seen pouring from the vehicle as armed police smash the windows to remove the driver.

"Bomb squads were deployed to the scene and the Paris prosecutor's counter-terrorism unit opened an investigation into what is suspected to be a deliberate act," France24 says.

It is the second attack on police in the street in three months and comes amid a nationwide state of emergency following a string of terror attacks in the country.