France on Edge After Killing of a Teacher and Hamas Attack

The terrorist assault by Hamas in Israel and the retaliatory strikes in Gaza had already put French authorities on edge, pushing them to jack up safety at Jewish websites and ban pro-Palestinian protests.

Then, final Friday, simply three days earlier than the nation was set to mark the somber anniversary of a teacher’s gruesome beheading by an Islamist extremist, an eerily related assault hit at house as a person used a knife to kill a instructor and injure three different individuals at a college in northern France in what officers referred to as an Islamist terror assault.

Since then, the temper in France has gone from anxious to alarmed. The authorities raised the terrorist risk alert to its highest stage, pouring much more cops and troopers onto the streets. Bomb scares emptied out main websites over the weekend, including the Louvre and Versailles Palace.

Officers in flak jackets with machine weapons, their fingers resting on the triggers, stood sentinel on Saturday outdoors the varsity where a former student went on a stabbing spree the day earlier than, killing Dominique Bernard, 57, a French literature instructor.

Mourners arrived bearing bouquets of white roses. Many had been racked with grief, but additionally had been questioning anxiously whether or not the escalating disaster within the Center East had stoked the embers of Islamic terrorism and blown them to a small northern French metropolis.

“We’re on the opposite aspect of the world, however we face the implications,” mentioned David Milhamont, together with his son Valentin, 11, who was scurried out of the attacker’s path on Friday by a corridor monitor and sheltered in a classroom. “Simply how far it should go, that’s the query.”

The suspected attacker, Mohammed Mogushkov, 20, is in custody.

The sense of tension has been compounded by the ominous timing of the assault — nearly three years to the day after the brutal homicide of Samuel Paty, a historical past instructor who was beheaded by an Islamist extremist for displaying caricatures of the Prophet Muhammad in his class for instance free speech, a killing that deeply traumatized the country.

Prescheduled ceremonies in colleges throughout the nation to honor Mr. Paty on Monday had been immediately painfully related.

“Islamist terrorism has struck at what it rightly regards as its best adversary: our colleges,” President Emmanuel Macron mentioned in a message to academics.

“Terrorists know that there may be no Republic with out colleges, with out patiently studying in your school rooms about crucial pondering and the values of liberty, equality, fraternity and secularism that forge residents,” he mentioned.

The assault additionally got here the morning after Mr. Macron reiterated the nation’s unwavering assist for Israel within the wake of the terrorist assaults by Hamas. French authorities have raised the likelihood that there was a hyperlink between Friday’s assault and the battle however have provided little concrete proof.

Dwelling to a few of Europe’s largest Muslim and Jewish communities, France has been on alert for the reason that battle began when Hamas invaded Israel on Oct. 7. There have been practically 200 antisemitic acts, principally verbal threats and vandalism, and over 100 individuals have been arrested for such acts or for glorifying terrorism, in keeping with the inside minister, Gérald Darmanin.

The fears of additional tensions come up in a rustic already deeply scarred by Islamist terrorism, with two large-scale assaults occurring in 2015 and 2016, adopted by a string of smaller, lethal shootings and stabbings in subsequent years, usually carried out by lone assailants.

Many in France are warily accustomed to the risk. However few anticipated an assault in a spot like Arras, a small metropolis 50 minutes by prepare from Paris, with a historical past of quietly welcoming refugees.

“We’ve had no issues of racism that you just see in some components of France, and there’s no far-right presence,” mentioned the town’s mayor, Frédéric Leturque. “Sadly, this occurred in Arras. Nevertheless it may have occurred in some other metropolis in France.”

The horror unfurled on Friday morning at Gambetta-Carnot, a big public faculty within the metropolis’s middle.

The assailant’s bloody rampage led him into the varsity’s internal courtyard, the place many younger youngsters had been ready for the cafeteria to open. Witnesses heard him shout “God is nice” in Arabic through the assault.

A lot of these arriving to position their bouquets on an overflowing desk close to the varsity entrance on Saturday had been college students who had witnessed the assaults, and their shaken dad and mom.

“I’m scared to return inside,” mentioned Franck Dissaux, 11. He couldn’t fathom that Mr. Bernard, his literature instructor final 12 months, was gone.

“Everybody beloved him,” he mentioned, his eyes brimming with tears.

Colleagues described Mr. Bernard as a faithful instructor and a passionate reader of French literature with an unlimited library, who usually left books of their cubby holes with inscriptions. He was married with three daughters.

“I hold asking myself, ‘Why him?’” mentioned Philippe Lourdel, a math instructor on the faculty.

Faculties all through Arras had been put into lockdown Friday. Inside his barricaded classroom at one other faculty, Marius Lajara, 15, mentioned he watched the assault unfurl on social media.

“There was the sensation of conflict within the metropolis,” he mentioned after arriving by bike together with his rattled dad and mom and little sister. “I’m nonetheless in shock.”

The assault rekindled a fierce debate on immigration as a result of Mr. Mogushkov was on the nation’s safety radar for radicalism and was not a French citizen.

Like Mr. Paty’s killer, Mr. Mogushkov was born within the Caucasus area of Russia and got here to France at a younger age together with his household, which filed for asylum. However some in his household espoused a harmful type of Islam, the authorities mentioned.

In 2018, his father was deported due to “radical ideology,” Mr. Darmanin mentioned. And his older brother, Mosvar, is serving time in jail after two separate convictions on terrorism fees. Mosvar had been flagged in 2016 by his faculty for threatening academics and carrying the qamis — a protracted gown utilized by some Muslim males that was recently banned in schools together with an identical garment for ladies.

Like his older brother, Mr. Mogushkov had additionally been flagged by faculty officers, and had been below surveillance since July. The police even arrested him the day earlier than the assault however discovered no proof of against the law or of a nascent plot and shortly launched him.

Politicians on the suitable and much proper have blasted the federal government for not deporting Mr. Mogushkov, despite the fact that, barring exceptions, French regulation prevents the authorities from deporting individuals who arrived in France below the age of 13.

“We don’t make them depart,” mentioned Henri Leroy, who’s a part of a Senate committee to review the response to stress, threats and assaults on academics. “They keep on French soil and they’re strolling bombs.”

Mr. Leroy cited recent polls that present roughly half of France’s academics really feel uneasy discussing freedom of expression or the bedrock French concept of laïcité, or secularism, in school. He mentioned authorities adjustments made since Mr. Paty’s homicide — like making it simpler for academics who’re threatened to get safety, or enhancing cooperation between police and faculty authorities — will not be sufficient.

The federal government has vowed to hurry up the deportation of practically 200 radicalized foreigners who’re in France illegally, and it wants to toughen some immigration laws.

“Faculties are the Republic’s fertile floor,” Prime Minister Élisabeth Borne said on Saturday at a ceremony for an award created in Mr. Paty’s title. “You enter as a pupil, you permit as a citizen.”

However in contrast to Mr. Paty’s killer, who stalked him on the road, Mr. Mogushkov went immediately into the varsity — including a brand new layer of concern, mentioned Sébastien Ledoux, an affiliate professor of historical past on the Picardie Jules Verne College in Amiens who has studied the impact of terrorist assaults on pupil life.

“That will increase the sense of vulnerability,” he mentioned, “which is what terrorists need.”