Less than an hour away from Paris, a French passenger got up from his seat to use the toilets at the back of the carriage. Suddenly, in front of him rose a slightly built man. Across the man’s chest, in a sling, was an automatic rifle of the kind favored by jihadists the world over: an AK-47.
The passenger threw himself on the man. The gun went off, once, twice, several times. Glass shattered. A bullet hit a passenger.
Americans and Briton Who Thwarted Train Attack Receive Top French Honor
“One need only know that Ayoub El Khazzani was in possession of 300 rounds of ammunition and firearms to understand what we narrowly avoided, a tragedy, a massacre,” Mr. Hollande said at the ceremony, referring to the suspect in the attack, a Moroccan who is in police custody and denies that he had planned to stage a terrorist attack.
French police are questioning Ayoub El-Khazzani, a 25-year-old Moroccan accused of carrying out Friday's attempted attack on a high-speed Thalys train between Amsterdam and Paris. The suspect, who was restrained and held on the floor by passengers, is said to have links to the "radical Islamist movement".
Local media reported that French actor Jean-Hugues Anglade, (standing) who played hardman cop Eddy Caplan in gritty crime drama Braquo was among the three people who were wounded in the shooting