Police open fire at Paris train station on veiled woman 'making threats'

French police on Tuesday morning shot and seriously wounded a woman who was making threats at a train station in Paris, according to reports from French news agency AFP.

Police officers stand by the Bibliothèque François Mitterand subway station on 31 October, 2023 in Paris. AP - Michel Euler

According to witnesses the 38-year-old woman, who was completely veiled, shouted "Allahu akbar" ("God is Greatest") and "made threats", a police source said, adding that "police fired because they feared for their safety".

The incident occurred between 8:30 and 9:30 am on the RER C line in central Paris, at the Bibliothèque François Mitterrand stop, in the 13th district.

The woman was shot and held by police after refusing to follow their order to stop.

Citing a police source, AFP reports say that police were warned by calls from passengers who indicated a "completely veiled" woman who was "uttering threats".

Two police officers then fired eight rounds at the woman, inflicting a life-threatening injury to her abdomen, the prosecutor's office said. It had earlier said that one officer had fired only one shot.

No explosives or other arms were found on the woman who was taken to hospital, the police source said.

The woman "refused to comply with the police's orders" and "fearing for their safety, they used their weapons".

The Paris prosecutor's office added that she threatened "to blow herself up", adding that police fired one shot, inflicting a life-threatening injury.

#RERC à #Paris : la gare Bibliothèque François-Mitterrand évacuée, intervention de la police ⤵️https://t.co/3mpqhcZtHE

— actu Paris (@actufrparis) October 31, 2023

The Bibliotheque Francois Mitterrand station, named after France's national library which dominates the area, was still closed to the public in the early afternoon.

Police have launched two investigations, prosecutors said. One will probe the woman's actions, while another is to elucidate whether the police's use of a firearm was justified.

Not on a watchlist

Government spokesman Olivier Veran later said said that there had been "at least three" calls from passengers to rail operator SNCF, which in turn alerted police.

"Police, evaluating the situation to be dangerous, opened fire," he told reporters.

Footage from the officers' bodycams and from CCTV at the station would help establish the facts of the case precisely, he said.

Veran added that the woman had a previous conviction for threatening patrolling soldiers.

Paris police chief Laurent Nunez said the woman, a French national, had in July 2021 been arrested by a military patrol, deployed to beef up security amid attack fears, when she threatened the soldiers with a screwdriver and "made remarks with a religious content".

She was detained briefly, and then committed to psychiatric care, he said.

She was never on a radicalisation watchlist, Nunez added, contrary to what two police sources had claimed earlier.

France's anti-terror unit is not part of the ongoing investigation of the incident, prosecutors said.

France has been under "attack alert" since 13 October when a teacher in the northern city of Arras was stabbed to death by an Islamist former pupil.

France has large Muslim and Jewish populations, so many fear repercussions from the 7 October attack by Hamas on Israel and the subsequent Israeli bombardment of Gaza.

Bomb alerts have led to the evacuation of dozens of airports, train stations and tourist sites, including the Versailles palace, in recent weeks.

• Louvre and Versailles evacuated amid maximum security alert in France

On Monday, Interior Minister Gerald Darmanin said that there had been 819 anti-Semitic acts in France since October 7, and 414 connected arrests.

 (with AFP)