Four U.S. female tourists were attacked with acid in France’s Marseille main train station on Sunday. Authorities arrested a woman afterwards. From The Associated Press:
Two of the tourists were injured in the face in the attack in the city’s main Saint Charles train station and one of them has a possible eye injury, a spokeswoman for the Marseille prosecutor’s office told The Associated Press in a phone call.She said all four of the women, who are in their 20s, have been hospitalized, two of them for shock.The spokeswoman said the 41-year-old female suspect did not make any extremist threats or declarations during the attack. She said there were no obvious indications that the woman’s actions were terror-related, but added that officials could not be 100 percent sure about ruling out terror links at such an early stage of the investigation.
Marseille is located on France’s southern coast, about 490 miles from Paris.
Doctors treated one of the women for “partial loss of vision.”
France 24 reported that the attacker “justified her actions by saying she herself had been the victim of an acid attack when she was younger.” The police already knew the attacker for theft.
The AP detailed other attacks that have happened recently in Marseille:
In previous incidents in Marseille, a driver deliberately rammed into two bus stops last month, killing a woman, but officials said it wasn’t terror-related.In April, French police say they thwarted an imminent “terror attack” and arrested two suspected radicals in Marseille just days before the first round of France’s presidential election. Paris prosecutor Francois Molins told reporters the two suspects “were getting ready to carry out an imminent, violent action” on French territory.In January 2016, a 15-year-old Turkish Kurd was arrested after attacking a Jewish teacher on a Marseille street. He told police he acted in the name of the Islamic State group.
*This is an ongoing story. We will update when more information comes out.
The victims have been identified. From NBC Los Angeles:
In a statement, Boston College said the victims were four students at the school who were in a study abroad program. “The students were identified as BC juniors Courtney Siverling, Charlotte Kaufman, Michelle Krug, who are enrolled in Boston College’s Paris program, and junior Kesley Korsten, who is a student at the Copenhagen Business School in Denmark,” the school said in the statement.
CLICK HERE FOR FULL VERSION OF THIS STORY