Suspect detained over Annecy knife attack

Police in France have a man under investigation for attempted murder, the equivalent of being charged, following a stabbing incident in the town of Annecy last Thursday.

Abdalmasih Hanoun, a 31-year-old Syrian Christian refugee, reportedly refused to speak or answer any questions when he appeared before judges on Saturday, following the attack in a playground that left four children and two adults injured.

Public prosecutor Line-Bonnet Mathis told reporters that the child victims, aged between 22 months and three years, had suffered a total of 11 knife wounds, but added that they were no longer in danger.

One injured adult had already been released from medical care, and the second, who also sustained a gunshot injury when police were trying to overpower the suspect, in addition to knife wounds, has undergone surgery and is out of danger.

The incident is not currently being treated as terror-related, but the prosecutor said investigators were staying in contact with specialist police terrorist units.

It is understood the suspect was not known to the police or intelligence services, and had refugee status in Sweden, where he had a Swedish national wife of Syrian descent, although the couple have recently separated, and a daughter.

Although he was given permanent residence in Sweden in 2013, his involvement in the Syrian conflict meant he had had several nationality applications rejected.

Moa Englund-Flodstrom, his former lawyer in Sweden, told the Agence France-Presse news agency: "I didn't notice anything deviant about him, he seemed like a normal person."

It has been reported by French TV news channel BFMTV that he had recently made an unsuccessful bid for asylum status in France, with the country's Interior Minister Gerald Darmanin also revealing that "for reasons that haven't been explained, he made asylum requests in Switzerland (and) Italy."

News website France24 said witnesses to the attack heard him talking about his daughter, his wife and Jesus, and he is believed to have been carrying religious artefacts at the time of the incident.

The father of a man identified only as Henri, who helped overpower him, said his son had said "the Syrian was incoherent, saying lots of strange things in different languages, invoking his father, his mother, all the gods".

"That's when your brain turns off and you act like an animal, by instinct," Henri told reporters. "I didn't even think… you try to act as you can, with what you have available to you."

The New York Times newspaper reported that Henri had been joined by a municipal employee with a shovel, who had helped draw the attacker away from the children.

The Guardian newspaper quoted police sources as describing the attacker as "agitated" and "not in a normal state", but he had been assessed by a psychiatrist who said he was well enough to be detained in custody.