Man arrested outside French consulate in Saudi Arabia after attacking guard

A Saudi man was arrested in Jeddah after attacking a guard with a “sharp tool” at the French consulate on Thursday, as France urged its citizens in the kingdom to be “on maximum alert”.

The French Embassy in Riyadh said the consulate was subject to an “attack by knife which targeted a guard”, adding the guard was taken to hospital and his life was not in danger.

“The French embassy strongly condemns this attack against a diplomatic outpost which nothing could justify,” an embassy statement said.

Police spokesperson Major Mohammed al-Ghamdi said the special force for diplomatic security was able to arrest a Saudi man in his 40s, the Saudi Press Agency reported.

No immediate motive for the attack has been given.

The stabbing in the Red Sea port city came just hours after a knife-wielding man shouting “Allahu Akbar” beheaded a woman and killed two other people at a church in the southern French city of Nice. 

Nice’s mayor described the attack as terrorism.

The attacks are believed to be a response to the caricature mocking Turkey’s President printed on the front page of French satirical magazine Charlie Hebdo on Wednesday, and the recent projection of images of the Prophet onto buildings in Paris. 

The cartoon shows Recep Tayyip Erdogan in his underpants and a woman wearing a hijab with her rear exposed.

France is still reeling from the beheading earlier this month of a schoolteacher by a man of Chechen origin. 

The attacker had said he wanted to punish Samuel Paty for showing pupils cartoons of the Prophet Muhammad for a class on free speech.

Those caricatures were published by Charlie Hebdo and cited by the men who gunned down the newspaper’s editorial meeting in 2015.

Since Paty’s killing, French officials have reasserted the right to display the cartoons, and the images have been widely displayed at marches in solidarity with the killed teacher.

That has prompted anger in parts of the Muslim world, with some governments accusing Emmanuel Macron of pursuing an anti-Islam agenda.

Saudi Arabia on Tuesday condemned cartoons offending the Prophet Muhammad, but held back from echoing calls by other Muslim states for action against images being displayed in France of the Prophet. 

Saudi clerics have too condemned the caricatures, but have also cited the prophet’s “mercy, justice, tolerance”.

Another prominent sheikh called on Muslims not to overreact.