France knife attack suspect charged with terrorism offences, murder

A man who killed two people in a knife attack in southeastern France at the weekend is a refugee from Sudan and has been charged with terrorism offences and murder, the French anti-terrorist prosecutor's office said on Wednesday.

Five people were also wounded in Saturday's attack. The 33-year-old suspect probably acted alone, "without having been given any orders by a terrorist organisation", the office said in a statement. It added that the man, who worked locally, had not been known to police forces or intelligence services. He had arrived in France in August 2016 and obtained refugee status in June 2017.

When police arrested him shortly after the attack, he was kneeling on a pavement and praying in Arabic. A search of his home revealed documents with a religious connotation in which the author complained in particular of living in a country of "unbelievers".

France has experienced a wave of attacks by Islamist militants in recent years. Bombings and shootings in November 2015 at the Bataclan theatre and other sites around Paris killed 130 people, and in July 2016 an Islamist militant drove a truck through a crowd celebrating Bastille Day in Nice, killing 86.