WATCH: An injured person is wheeled away on a stretcher at the scene of the accident in Nantes, France.
PARIS – France’s top security official says the driver of a van that crashed into a Christmas market in western France on Monday stabbed himself several times after the incident.
11 people including the driver were injured in the incident, which occurred in the town Nantes on a busy market full of holiday shoppers.
Speaking on French television, Interior Ministry spokesman Pierre-Henry Brandet said the driver “deliberately crashed into the crowd.”
Brandet said the driver is among five people that are seriously hurt.
READ MORE: France raises number of victims injured in car rampage to 13
Interior Minister Bernard Cazeneuve said in a statement he was going to Nantes Monday evening.
Video images on French television showed a white Peugeot van in the market at the city’s main square.
The apparent attack in Nantes came after a pair of weekend attacks – one in which a driver ran down 13 bystanders, and another in which a recent convert to Islam knifed police officers.
The driver was arrested following the attack in the city Dijon in eastern France, while the assailant who stabbed the officers outside the city of Tours was shot to death by police. None of the victims in those attacks died.
The prosecutor in Dijon said the driver behind the attack in that city has a long history of severe mental illness and no links to terrorism.
The man, who is 40, has admitted his role in the attack, said prosecutor Marie-Christine Tarrare. She said the man, the French-born son of North African immigrants, acted alone and had no religious motivations, but rather was upset at the treatment of Chechen children.
READ MORE: Driver shouting ‘Allahu Akbar’ hits crowds of pedestrians in France
He shouted ‘God is great’ to give himself courage to act, and not out of religious belief, Tarrare said.
Eight of those injured in that attack remained hospitalized Monday.
Cazeneuve visited Dijon Monday, an indication of the government’s heightened concerns days after Islamic extremists renewed calls for individuals to strike in the West.
Counter-terrorist police are also investigating the attack Saturday on police in a suburb of Tours, which left two officers seriously injured and a third with light injuries.
Paris prosecutor Francois Molins said that attacker, who was killed by police, was a 20-year-old from Burundi named Bertrand. Police believe he’d been drawn to radical Islam several years ago by his 19-year-old brother Brice, who’s been detained for questioning by police in Burundi, Molins said.
Comments