France stabbing – latest: Annecy locals attend mass as Mayor says injured children are ‘stable’

The suspected attacker was “neither under the influence of drugs nor alcohol” at the time, French prosecutors have said.

The Telegraph reported that the 31-year-old Syrian asylum-seeker was sober when he allegedly stabbed six people in a park in the quiet town of Annecy on Thursday morning.

All of the children - whose ages ranged from 22 months to three years - were rushed to hospital in a critical condition. Local officials have since told the BBC that they are in a stable condition.

A British girl injured in a knife attack at a lakeside park in the French Alps is in stable condition in hospital, according to reports.

The girl, said to be aged three, was one of four children and two adults wounded when the suspect - identified by police as a 31-year-old Syrian - attacked people with a knife in the town of Annecy on Thursday.

Authorities said the children were taken to hospital in critical condition, but Annecy mayor Francois Astorg told French media on Thursday evening they were “stable” and “out of the operating room” - with the Telegraph reporting the girl is now in hospital in Grenoble, a city around an hour-and-a-half away by car.

One of the adults involved suffered serious injuries as a result of both a knife wound from the attacker and a bullet wound from police as they shot at the knifeman while trying to detain him, according to local prosecutor Line Bonnet-Mathis.

Witnesses said the knifeman shouted “in the name of Jesus Christ” as he launched the attack, including stabbing a child in a pushchair repeatedly as bystanders screamed for help.

Ms Bonnet-Mathis told a press conference on Thursday afternoon the attacker’s motives remain unclear, but do not appear to be related to terrorism.

A picturesque French town has been left reeling after four children were stabbed in a playground horror attack.

Two adults were also injured in the attack in Annecy in the French Alps on Thursday morning. All of the youngsters - who were aged between 22 months and three - were transferred to hospitals in the French Alps and across the Swiss border in Geneva.

One of the injured children is British, the UK foreign secretary James Cleverly confirmed and is believed to have been on holiday at the time.

Oliver Pritchard-Jones reports:

France had rejected earlier this month an asylum demand made by the man behind the knife attack earlier on Thursday in the French town of Annecy, said French interior minister Gerald Darmanin.

Darmanin also told TF1 news that the Syrian refugee arrested over the attack had “certain Christian religious insignia” upon him. He had obtained asylum in Sweden 10 years ago, and made asylum requests in Switzerland and Italy as well, added Darmanin.

Flowers have been placed at a playground in the ‘Jardins de l’Europe’ in Annecy where a knife attack took place on Thursday morning.

A Syrian refugee suspected of stabbing six people in the French Alpine town did not appear to have a "terrorist motive", the local prosecutor told reporters.

Prosecutor Line Bonnet-Mathis said that of the four children injured in the assault, one was aged just 22 months, two were two-year-olds, and the eldest was three.

An alpine town in southeastern France, Annecy is nicknamed the “Pearl of the French Alps.”

It is 93 miles east of Lyon, the third-largest city in France, and has a population of approximately 50,000.

Here, we map out the town’s location in France and zoom in on where the scene took place:

One woman, Eleanor Vincent, who has been in Annecy for the last five days on holiday, was at the scene as police began to cordon off the park.

She told Sky News: “The police were there very quickly, the area was cordoned off.

“I did not see the crime scene thank heavens, but I did see the aftermath because I stayed in the area for about 45 minutes just trying to take in what had happened and to take some photos to be able to document what was going on.”

Chantale Farmer, deputy mayor of Annecy, told BBC News that support has been put in place for witnesses and a class of schoolchildren who were in the park at the time of the attack.

She said: “We’ve put in place psychological help, a free phone number that people can phone.

“We also took into account the witnesses and the victims with the hospitals (and) with some doctors so they could speak out.

“We’ve done it also in a school because there was a class that was doing sport on the field during the attack and so we’ve put the psychological help also in that school to help people to express and to try to find a way to help them, as we can.

“The phone number is on our website for people.”

Speaking to BBC News, deputy mayor of Annecy, Chantale Farmer, said schools were put on “lockdown” shortly after the attack in a nearby playground.

When asked how people living in the town are, she said: “They are shocked and devastated.

“They’re really sad and they feel also some anger so we share this with them.

“We try to answer some questions that we can.

“We try to protect the children because we had schools around so we locked them down for a while and so we (could) also give information to the parents and also to the people working in those schools.

“All the people in Annecy are very shocked right now.”

Annecy mayor François Astorg has confirmed that injured children are “out of the operating room” after this morning’s attack.

“For the moment, their condition seems stable”, he told French broadcaster BFM TV.

One adult remained in surgery, Mr Astorg said.