The perpetrator - who was monitored by intelligence services for security - said he was angry about what was happening in Gaza.

One person was killed with a knife and two others were wounded with a hammer by an assailant near the Eiffel Tower in Paris on Saturday night while shouting "Allah akbar", according to witnesses.

Police officers neutralized him with an electric shocker and detained him on the spot, Interior Minister Gérald Darmanin said.

First, the criminal police opened an investigation for murder and attempted murder, and then the counter-terrorism prosecutor's office took over the case.

The perpetrator Armand R., a 26-year-old French citizen born in Neuilly-sur-Seine, an elegant suburb of Paris, suffers from psychological problems and is on the secret services' register of persons dangerous to state security due to his radical Islamist views.

Back in 2016, he was sentenced to four years for an assassination plot, and since his release he has been under the surveillance of the secret services

said the Minister of the Interior on the spot.

The victim is a German citizen who was in the French capital as a tourist. He was with his wife and friend at the time of the attack, they were not injured in the attack. The two injured, a Frenchman in his sixties and a foreign tourist, the nationality of the latter is unknown, are not in danger.

According to the police, when he was arrested, the assailant said that he could not stand the fact that Muslims were being killed all over the world.

“I know he said Allah is great. He allegedly told the taxi driver, who wanted to intervene, and he also allegedly told the police," said the interior minister, who said the perpetrator also told the police: "he is angry about what is happening in Gaza, France is complicit in what Israel is doing, and he is fed up it's because Muslims are dying".

The head of the ministry also said that the assailant lives with his parents and is undergoing psychiatric treatment.

"We will not give in to terrorism. Never"

- wrote French Prime Minister Élisabeth Borne on X, who assured the injured and their relatives of her support, and thanked the law enforcement forces and paramedics for their courage and professionalism.

MTI

Featured image: MTI/AP/RTR Pool/Stephanie Lecocq