MOSCOW (Sputnik) — According to Le Parisien newspaper, the assailant, named Ali Sallah, was born in Morocco’s Casablanca in 1995. In 2013, he was charged in relation to a petty theft in France.
Earlier Thursday, a man armed with a knife and an object similar to an explosive device was trying to enter the police station. He was later shot down by the law enforcers. The sappers determined that the belt was fake.
According to the Paris prosecutor, the assailant was carrying a piece of paper with the flag of the Daesh group and a handwritten statement in Arabic.
The attack took place exactly a year after the attack on the Parisian office of the Charlie Hebdo magazine. On January 7, 2015, the office of the magazine known for publishing controversial caricatures of religious figures, was attacked by Islamist gunmen who killed 12 people and wounded 11, after the magazine published cartoons of Prophet Muhammad.