France declares emergency alert for whole nation as imminent attack feared | World | News

Following the attack, a report on Pakistan’s news channel GeoNews said that Al-Qaeda has called for “action against US embassies and military assets, and calls for attacks on Christians and Jewish people worldwide.”

Speaking earlier, President Emmanuel Macron said France had been “hit once again by the barbarity of Islamist terrorism”.

“Nearly three years to the day after the assassination of Samuel Paty, terrorism has hit a school again and in a context that we’re all aware of,” Macron said at the site of the attack in Arras, a city 115 miles (185 kilometres) north of Paris.

The suspected assailant in Arras was arrested, and several others are also in custody, national counterterrorism prosecutor Jean-Francois Ricard said.

The National Police force identified him as a Russian national of Chechen origin who was born in 2003.