France was hit yesterday by two Islamist armed threats against schools and daycare centers just hours apart – the latest symptom of rising tensions after a wave of attacks.
Staff at a daycare center in the Paris suburb of Créteil were yesterday confronted by a man brandishing a knife and threatening to kill and rape them before fleeing the scene on foot.
After seeking out the director of the Les minis Kids daycare center, the man approached her with a 6-inch knife, prosecutors said, and declared: “You are a Jew, you are a Zionist, five of us are going to come and rape you, cut yourself to pieces like they did in Gaza,” in a dark and twisted threat.
Prosecutors said they have opened an investigation into the daycare burglary and death threats based on “race, ethnicity, national origin or religion.”
It happened just hours after a 12-year-old schoolgirl was restrained by staff and detained by police after threatening her English teacher with a knife during class at a school in Rennes.
Prosecutor Philippe Astruc said the girl later stated she wanted to carry out her attack “like the one in Arras”, referring to an extremist attack on October 13 in which teacher Dominique Bernard was stabbed to death at Gambetta secondary school in the northern French city.
The disturbing threats came less than a week after a French court convicted six teenagers for their role in the 2020 beheading of Samuel Paty outside his high school near Paris after helping identify him as a radicalized Islamist.
Philippe Astruc shows the knife a 12-year-old student used to threaten a teacher in Rennes, western France on December 13, 2023
Staff at a daycare center in the Paris suburb of Créteil were yesterday confronted by a man brandishing a knife and threatening to kill and rape them before fleeing the scene on foot.
This photo taken on December 13, 2023 shows the entrance to the school 'Les hautes Ourmes' in Rennes, western France, where a 12-year-old student threatened a teacher with a knife
Dominique Bernard was stabbed to death on October 13 at Gambetta secondary school in the northern French city
Tensions have increased at schools in France, home to large Muslim and Jewish communities.
Speaking about the attempted knife attack by the 12-year-old in Rennes yesterday, Astruc said the schoolgirl 'came to class armed with a large knife with the apparent intention of killing her English teacher.
“During class, she brandished the knife in class at the victim who fled running,” before the girl was disarmed by staff at Hautes Ourmes secondary school, he added.
“The startled students were immediately taken to safety,” the local education authority said.
At a press conference, Astruc showed drawings of a kitchen knife, which he said was 17 centimeters long.
The girl underwent psychiatric examination at the hospital, which showed that “the minor was 'dangerous to herself' and that her condition required care in a specialized environment,” Astruc said in a statement on Wednesday.
The prosecutor had previously said that it appeared that the girl's “psychological or even psychiatric aspect” seemed “dominant in the act.”
In a separate incident last week at the Jacques Cartier school in Issou, west of Paris, a group of Muslim students threatened and accused a teacher of racism when she showed an Italian Renaissance painting depicting naked women.
She is said to have feared for her life after her name was spread on social media as it prompted the extremist to target Paty in 2020.
The students are said to have expressed their outrage after the teacher showed the 17th-century masterpiece 'Diana and Actaeon' by the Italian painter Giuseppe Cesari during a drawing lesson on Thursday.
The work portrays a story from Greek mythology in which the hunter Actaeon bursts into a place where the goddess Diana and her nymphs are bathing. It depicts a naked Diana and four naked female companions, and is held in the Louvre in Paris.
History and geography teacher Samuel Paty, 47, was beheaded outside a school near Paris
Paty was violently stabbed to death and then beheaded by 18-year-old Chechen refugee Abdoullakh Anzorov on October 16, 2020
Last week, a teacher in Issou, west of Paris, “feared for her life” after she was criticized on social media for showing students this Renaissance painting – “Diana and Actaeon” by Italian painter Giuseppe Cesari
A sign hanging outside the school in Issou claimed that there were incidents at the school while resources to resolve them were scarce
Fellow staffers refused to work in solidarity with the teacher on Monday, when Minister Gabriel Attal visited the school and said disciplinary proceedings would be launched “against the students responsible for this situation and who have also admitted to the facts.”
Sophie Venetitay, secretary general of the secondary school teachers' union Snes-FSU, told broadcaster BFMTV: 'We know very well that such methods can lead to tragedy… We saw it in the murder of Samuel Paty.
'Our colleagues feel threatened and in danger.'
Paty, a 47-year-old history and geography teacher, was stabbed and beheaded in October 2020 in the Paris suburb of Conflans-Sainte-Honorine, just 20 kilometers from Issou, after being tracked down by an Islamic extremist who saw his name online. .
During a discussion about freedom of expression, Paty had shown his class cartoons of the Prophet Mohammed from the satirical magazine Charlie Hebdo.
In an email sent to parents on Friday, teachers in Issou said they were exercising their right to stay away from classrooms due to the “particularly difficult situation” at the high school.
They called 'palpable discomfort' and 'an increase in the number of cases of violence' their daily reality.
Teachers said the students admitted to making things up online, but it was too late to quell the anger.
“We are dealing with vindictive parents who would rather believe their children than us,” they said in a statement.
Teachers at the school said behavior had deteriorated even before the fight, with students fighting and threatening rape.
