Stabbings spark anti-terror inquiry in France, three more arrests in Britain
Search for knifeman in Paris attack as more suspects held over murder of British soldier
French anti-terror officers were yesterday investigating the stabbing of a soldier in Paris, in an attack that echoed the grisly killing of another soldier in London, where British police were holding three new suspects.
Cedric Cordier was in a stable condition in hospital after the stabbing on Saturday at a busy underground shopping and transport hub where he had been on patrol with two colleagues.
French President Francois Hollande said the stabbing could not be linked to the London murder "at this stage", although Interior Minister Manuel Valls said the "sudden violence of the attack" was similar. The assault on Cordier three days after Afghanistan veteran drummer Lee Rigby was hacked to death on a London street in an Islamist attack will raise fears of a spiral of brazen violence against Western soldiers on their home soil.
In Britain, three men were arrested on Saturday on suspicion of conspiracy to murder Rigby. Two men, aged 28 and 24, were arrested at a home in southeast London. Police fired a Taser electric stun gun at the older suspect, and at a 21-year-old man they arrested in a street around a kilometre from the murder scene.