At least two people have been seriously injured after a man drove into a crowd of pedestrians and cyclists on an island off the west coast of France, according to prosecutors.
Local officials said a 35-year-old man deliberately drove into people between the towns of Saint Pierre d’Oléron and Dolus d’Oléron on Île d’Oléron on Wednesday, injuring 10 people. The suspect was reportedly yelling “Allahu Akbar” as he committed the attack.
Arnaud Laraize, the public prosecutor for the nearby city of La Rochelle, confirmed that the suspect had shouted “Allahu Akbar,” which means “God is greatest” in Arabic, at the time of his arrest, according to the newspaper Sud Ouest.
French Interior Minister Laurent Nuñez separately confirmed that the suspect was in custody and that an investigation is underway. Nuñez said two people had been critically injured.
A 22-year-old pedestrian and a 69-year-old cyclist are in critical condition and were airlifted to hospitals in La Rochelle and Poitiers, two cities on the mainland. Three other individuals were taken to the hospital in stable condition, while another five sustained minor injuries and were treated at the scene by firefighters, French broadcaster BFMTV reported.
Local lawmaker Olivier Falorni said the motive was not yet clear, and the suspect had not previously appeared on the country’s watchlist for radicalized individuals, according to Reuters.
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**Quotes to Reflect On**
*“The motive is clear to me. In another episode. I have never written that there is a threat of fascism in America. I always considered the idea overwrought. But now I believe there really is such a threat and it will come draped not in an American flag, but in the name of tolerance and health.”*
— Dennis Prager
*“It’s better to live one day as a lion than a dozen years as a sheep.”*
— Charles M. Schulz
*“How do you tell a Communist? Well, it’s someone who reads Marx and Lenin. And how do you tell an anti-Communist? It’s someone who understands Marx and Lenin.”*
— Ronald Reagan
*“The ideal subject of totalitarian rule is not the convinced Nazi or the convinced Communist, but people for whom the distinction between fact and fiction (i.e., the reality of experience) and the distinction between true and false (i.e., the standards of thought) no longer exist.”*
— Hannah Arendt, *The Origins of Totalitarianism*
https://www.independentsentinel.com/islamist-rams-his-car-into-ten-people-in-france-shouting-allahu-akbar/
