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Police work next to the train at the main train station in Arras, northern France, following the attack. Photo: EPA
American servicemen overpowered a gunman armed with a Kalashnikov who opened fire on a high-speed train travelling from Amsterdam to Paris on Friday, preventing what the White House said could have been a “far worse tragedy”.
According to initial information from investigators, two of the men who tackled the gunman were American troops who had apparently heard him loading his weapons in a toilet cubicle and confronted him after he came out.
Two people were wounded in the incident, with the Pentagon confirming that one was a member of the US military. The gunman had a Kalashnikov, an automatic pistol and a box cutter, one police source said.
The suspect, who was arrested when the train stopped at the northern French town of Arras, was a 26-year-old from Morocco or of Moroccan origin who was known to the intelligence services, French investigators said.
US President Barack Obama praised the passengers for their actions.
“The president expressed his profound gratitude for the courage and quick thinking of several passengers, including US service members, who selflessly subdued the attacker,” a White House official said. “Their heroic actions may have prevented a far worse tragedy.”
The motives for the shooting were not immediately known, although French prosecutors said counter-terrorism investigators had taken over the probe.
France has been on high alert since Islamist gunmen went on the rampage in January, killing 17 people in Paris.
WATCH: Video circulating online shows the moments after the gunman was subdued (WARNING: may be upsetting to some readers)
“I condemn the terrorist attack on the Thalys [train] and express my sympathy to the victims,” Belgian Prime Minister Charles Michel said on Twitter of the incident, which occurred while the train was in Belgium.
The man opened fire at 5.50pm, train operator Thalys said.
The gunman was arrested 10 minutes later when the train, with 554 passengers on board, stopped at Arras station where armed police were waiting, a spokesman for the French state rail company SNCF said.
The Pentagon said one of those hurt was a member of the US military but his injuries were not life-threatening.
One victim was hit by a bullet, while the second suffered cuts to his elbow caused by a box cutter. There was no immediate confirmation that they were the men who had subdued the suspect.
One of the passengers on the train, who asked to be identified only as Damien, 35, said he had heard the gunman shooting but initially thought the sound came from a toy.
“The man stopped between two carriages, fired and it made a click-click-click sound, not at all like in the films,” he said, still clearly shocked.
“Then the man, who was bare-chested, returned to carriage 12 and someone in a green T-shirt, with a shaved head, saw him and jumped on him and pinned him to the ground.”
French actor Jean-Hugues Anglade, who appeared in the 1986 cult film Betty Blue staring Beatrice Dalle, suffered minor injuries as he tried to activate the train’s alarm, a spokesman for French rail operator SNCF said.
The gunman had probably boarded the train in Brussels, a police source said.
Media reports said a Briton was also injured, but the Foreign Office in London said it had no reports of any British casualties.
French Interior Minister Bernard Cazeneuve, who went to Arras in the wake of the incident, also praised the Americans who had subdued the suspect.
They showed “great bravery in very trying circumstances”, he said. “Without their cool-headed actions we could have been faced with a terrible incident.”
French President Francois Hollande said “everything is being done to shed light” on the shooting.
Witness Nicolas Martinage, 17, said he had seen the victims being taken off the train in Arras.
“There were two people with blood on them, one had a wound to the eye. The second was around 30 and had a bandage on his shoulder. Both men were on stretchers,” he said.
One passenger, Patrick Arres, 51, said when the train pulled into Arras station he saw more than 30 armed police on the tracks. “They were looking for someone, people were scared.”
France remains on edge after Islamic extremists attacked the satirical magazine Charlie Hebdo and a Jewish supermarket in Paris in January in a spree that killed 17 people and shocked the world.
In June, a man beheaded his boss and tried to blow up a gas plant in southern France in what prosecutors say was an attack inspired by the Islamic State group.
In May last year, four people, including two Israeli tourists, were killed when a gunman opened fire at the Jewish Museum in Brussels.
LILLE, France - A day ago he was just another tourist on a train. By Saturday, U.S. Airman First Class Spencer Stone was recovering from knife wounds in a hospital in France, being thanked for foiling what the French government called an attempted terrorist attack.
Stone was touring Europe with two friends he grew up with in California. The three men in their 20s helped overpower a Kalashnikov-toting suspected Islamist militant on a high speed train heading for Paris from Amsterdam.
Among the other heroes of the night-time drama was a Frenchman on his way to the toilet who was first to tackle the assailant as he entered the carriage, and a 62-year-old Briton who still had blood spattered over his shirt as he spoke to journalists on Friday night.
But it may have been Stone, 23, of Lajes Air Base, Azores, who took the biggest risk.
"He was the first one to jump on him, he's the one who got cut up ... none of us are injured but Spencer took a few injuries and he just had no fear," 23-year-old student Anthony Sadler, told Reuters.
"That's our friend so once we saw him go we had to go and join him ... we couldn't have just left everybody die like that. It was a crazy situation, said Sadler, a student at Sacramento State University.
Sadler said everything happened very fast as the attacker, armed with an automatic pistol and a box cutter as well as the AK-47 assault rifle, appeared to try to clear his weapon which seemed to be jammed.
One passenger was hit by a bullet, and was in a serious but stable condition, authorities said. Stone is due to be released from hospital later on Saturday.
"I woke up to basically people ducking and then I was, like, 'Why is everybody ducking?' and then, when I turned round to look, he, the gunman, had just entered the car with the AK and then I was, like: 'This is really happening'," Sadler said.
"We just all ran back there and we tried to do whatever we could to try and beat him up so he didn't shoot anybody. He pulled out a box cutter and cut Spencer a couple of times but beside that we just tried to do whatever we could."
(L-R) Anthony Sadler, from Pittsburg, California, Aleck Sharlatos from Roseburg, Oregon, two men who helped to disarm an attacker on a train from Amsterdam to France, talk to journalists at a restaurant in Arras, France August 22, 2015. REUTERS/Pascal Rossignol
BACK FROM AFGHANISTAN
The third member of the group, 22-year-old National Guardsman Alek Skarlatos, said the vacation was partly to celebrate his return from a tour of duty in Afghanistan.
The men's fathers were thankful things turned out well.
"A guy comes back from Afghanistan and he has to fight a battle on vacation on a train in France," Emanuel Skarlatos said of his son, a college student who works at a Costco retail store as well as serving in the National Guard.
Speaking with Reuters by telephone from his home in Roseburg, Oregon, he said Skarlatos and Stone were as close as brothers, having grown up together in Carmichael, California.
"They trusted each other where one wouldn't back down if the other was getting his butt kicked," Skarlatos said.
"We're still trying to wrap our heads around it, but we're proud of him," Anthony Sadler's father, also named Anthony, told Reuters by phone. He said the three boys had known each other since middle school.
The elder Sadler, a 57-year-old pastor at Sacramento's Shiloh Baptist Church, said: "We're very, very thankful to God that he was not hurt or killed."
Asked if his son would continue his European trip, Sadler said "No, the trip is over... That's enough. He'll be returning home as soon as possible."
French Interior Minister Bernard Cazeneuve, President Francois Hollande and U.S. President Barack Obama hailed the train passengers as heroes. As a show of gratitude, the head of SNCF French railways said his company would organise a visit to France for the Americans' families, should they want to come.
Cazeneuve said the attacker's identity was not confirmed, but that if he was telling the truth to his interrogators, he was a 26-year-old of Moroccan nationality identified as dangerous and with connections to Islamist militants.
Briton Chris Norman, who helped the Americans overpower the gunman, said: "Without Spencer we'd all be dead."
French movie actor Jean-Hugues Anglade, star of international hits Betty Blue and Nikita, who was also on the train, was quoted as saying by BFMTV: "We were stuck in the wrong place with the right people. It's miraculous."
Re: Soldiers overpower gunman who opened fire on train travelling from Amsterdam to P
Father says French train attacker was 'good boy'
AFP
August 24, 2015, 7:18 am
London (AFP) - The father of a Moroccan man accused of a foiled attack on a crowded Amsterdam-Paris train described his son on Sunday as a "good boy" who worked hard and never talked politics.
Ayoub El Khazzani, 25, is being questioned by French anti-terror investigators after he opened fire on a high-speed train on Friday evening before being overpowered by passengers.
"I have no idea what he was thinking and I have not spoken to him for over a year," Mohamed El Khazzani told British newspaper The Telegraph in Algeciras in Spain.
"He was a good boy, very hardworking."
The suspected gunman "never talked politics; just football and fishing," his father told the Telegraph, breaking into sobs.
The alleged attacker maintains was only trying to rob passengers and is said to be "dumbfounded" by accusations he was planning a terror attack.
Asked about this defence, his father said "It's all very strange" before breaking into sobs again, the Telegraph reported.
Khazzani boarded the Paris-bound Thalys train in Brussels, armed with a Kalashnikov assault rifle, Luger automatic pistol, ammunition and a box-cutter.
He had been flagged as an Islamic extremist by intelligence services in Belgium, France, German and Spain.
The Khazzani family has lived in Spain since 2007, the Telegraph reported, and the suspected gunman was arrested twice in Madrid for selling hashish in 2009.
Mohamed El Khazzani, a father of five who works recycling materials, said his son may have been affected by a French telecommunications company that brought him to France to work on a six-month contract that was terminated early.
"After one month they were just kicked out. So now he's in France, not Spain. What is he meant to do? What is he supposed to eat?" the senior Khazzani said.
"They're criminals in that company, using people like that."
Re: Soldiers overpower gunman who opened fire on train travelling from Amsterdam to P
French investigators quiz 'dumbfounded' gunman
AFP
August 24, 2015, 6:26 am
Paris (AFP) - French anti-terror investigators on Sunday questioned a Moroccan man accused of a foiled attack on a crowded train, but he insists he was only trying to rob passengers, a lawyer said.
The heavily-armed alleged attacker, 25-year-old Ayoub El Khazzani, is said to be "dumbfounded" by accusations he was intending to carry out a terror attack despite being known to intelligence services in several countries for extremist links.
On Friday, he boarded a high-speed train in Brussels bound for Paris armed with a Kalashnikov assault rifle, Luger automatic pistol, ammunition and a box-cutter.
Witnesses say he opened fire, injuring a man before being wrestled to the floor and subdued by three American passengers and a Briton.
One of the Americans, National Guardsman Alek Skarlatos, told a press conference Sunday that if Khazzani had known how to handle guns he could have killed many people.
"He clearly had no firearms training whatsoever," he said.
"If he knew what he was doing or even got lucky and did the right thing, he would have been able to operate through all eight of the (ammunition) magazines and we probably wouldn't be here today along with a lot of other people."
The Americans revealed that they had only moved into the carriage where the attack took place because they were in search of a better Wi-Fi signal.
French President Francois Hollande will personally thank the group for their bravery on Monday, when he is to award them the country's top Legion d'Honneur medal.
Intelligence services in Belgium, France, Germany and Spain had previously flagged Khazzani as an Islamic extremist.
But he has denied any intention of waging a jihadist attack, telling investigators he had merely stumbled upon a weapons stash in park in Belgium and decided to use it to rob passengers, according to Sophie David, a lawyer assigned to his case when he was taken off the train in Arras, northern France.
- Suspect denies shots fired -
"He is dumbfounded that his act is being linked to terrorism," David told BFM-TV, adding that the suspect who is believed to have lived in Belgium describes himself as homeless.
"He says that by chance he found a suitcase with a weapon, with a telephone, hidden away," said David.
"He said he found it in the park which is just next to the Midi Station in Brussels, where he often sleeps with other homeless people.
"He says that the Kalashnikov didn't work and he was brought under control immediately without a single shot being fired."
The lawyer is no longer representing Khazzani as he has been transferred to a police station near Paris for questioning.
Under French law, suspects in terrorism-related investigations can be questioned for up to 96 hours, meaning Khazzani could be held until Tuesday evening.
Brandishing the weapons, the attacker emerged from a toilet cubicle on the high-speed train just after it crossed from Belgium into northern France.
A French passenger who first encountered him tried to disarm Khazzani but he got away and fired at least one shot, wounding a French-American traveller in his 50s.
But the attack was stopped when two off-duty US servicemen and their friend Anthony Sadler, a student, charged the gunman and restrained him.
In a press conference at the US ambassador's residence in Paris, 23-year-old Sadler dismissed suggestions that Khazzani was not trying to kill anyone.
"It doesn't take eight magazines (of bullets) to rob a train," Sadler said.
Skarlatos, 22, who recently returned from serving in Afghanistan, said the gunman had seemed highly determined.
"He seemed like he was ready to fight to the end. So were we."
- Suspect had itinerant lifestyle -
The Americans told the press conference they had reservations in the first-class carriage where the attack took place, but they could not initially find their seats.
They only moved to the carriage half an hour into the journey because the wireless Internet was poor and they were seeking a better connection.
Spencer Stone, who serves in the US Air Force, reached the gunman first and was slashed in the neck and on the eye and almost had his thumb sliced off with a box-cutter.
Stone said he first saw the suspect after waking from a deep sleep.
"I turned around and I saw he had what looked to be an AK-47 and it looked jammed or it wasn't working and he was trying to charge the weapon and Alek hit me and said 'let's go'."
They pinned the man to the ground and hit him on the head until he was unconscious. British passenger Chris Norman then helped them tie up the gunman.
"The gunman would have been successful if my friend Spencer had not gotten up. I want that lesson to be learned. In times of terror like that to please do something. Don't just stand by and watch," said Sadler.
A Spanish counter-terrorism source said Khazzani had lived in Spain for seven years until 2014. He came to the attention of Spanish authorities for making hardline speeches defending jihad.
Spanish intelligence services say he went to France, from where he travelled to Syria, but the suspect has reportedly denied going to the conflict-ridden country where the Islamic State group controls swathes of territory.
Re: Soldiers overpower gunman who opened fire on train travelling from Amsterdam to P
France train attack was 'targeted and premeditated'
AFP
August 26, 2015, 7:27 am
Train gunman 'had 270 rifle bullets and bottle of petrol'
Paris (AFP) - French prosecutors said Tuesday there was a raft of evidence suggesting that the man arrested for last week's train attack carefully prepared a jihadist assault that would have ended in carnage had passengers not intervened.
Ayoub El Khazzani, a Moroccan national, boarded a high-speed train in Brussels Friday armed with a Kalashnikov assault rifle and 270 rounds of ammunition, as well as a Luger pistol, a bottle of petrol and a box-cutter, said Paris prosecutor Francois Molins.
The 25-year-old walked out of a toilet cubicle armed and topless before being wrestled to the floor and subdued by two young American off-duty servicemen, their friend and a 62-year-old British consultant who have since been given France's top honour, the Legion d'Honneur.
A Franco-American man was shot and injured in the attack, which Molins described as "targeted and premeditated".
Khazzani's claims to investigators that he was only planning to rob passengers were "barely credible", said Molins, adding that he had grown increasingly evasive in his responses to police and stopped responding entirely on Monday.
Molins outlined a raft of evidence indicating why Khazzani was being probed for "attempted murder" as part of a terrorist plot.
This included the fact that Khazzani flew back in June from a town in southern Turkey -- "a possible passageway into Syria" -- and that he watched a video "calling for violent acts in the name of radical Islam" on his phone prior to launching the attack.
Molins also raised suspicions about how Khazzani was able to afford a 149-euro ($171) first class train ticket, given his claims to be sleeping rough in Brussels.
Ticket sellers at the station have told investigators that Khazzani paid in cash and turned down an earlier journey where seats were available, which Molins said was an indication the target had been carefully chosen in advance.
He also dismissed as "absurd" claims by the suspect that he found the stash of weapons and mobile phone in a park where he was sleeping rough the night before.
And he said that Khazzani's Facebook page had mysteriously been disabled on Saturday -- the day after the foiled attack.
- Gaps in back story -
In footage caught by the iTele network, Khazzani was seen arriving at the Paris courthouse on Tuesday -- where a magistrate was to decide whether or not to charge him -- flanked by policemen, barefoot, handcuffed and with a mask over his eyes.
He had been on the radar of several European intelligence agencies, but several gaps remain in his back story.
He lived in Spain for seven years until 2014, where he came to the attention of authorities for making hardline comments defending jihad, attending a radical mosque in the port of Algeciras and being involved in drug trafficking.
Molins said he had also spent time in France in 2014 working for mobile phone operator Lycamobile -- a claim confirmed by the head of the firm who said Khazzani stayed for two months and left because he did not have the right work papers.
In May this year, he came onto the radar of intelligence services when German authorities warned he had boarded a plane for Turkey, seen as a possible sign that he travelled to war-torn Syria.
In June, he landed back in Albania, and on Friday, Khazzani boarded the Amsterdam-Paris train in Brussels.
Belgium has also opened a probe into the attack, with police carrying out searches at the homes of Khazzani's sister and one of his friends in Brussels, where he was believed to have spent several days.
Prosecutors said police had also questioned his sister, who was later released.
- 'Still exposed' -
France has been on high alert since three jihadist gunmen went on a killing spree in and near Paris in January, leaving 17 people dead.
"We are still exposed," French President Francois Hollande warned Tuesday.
"The aggression that took place on Friday... which could have degenerated into a monstrous carnage... is fresh proof that we must prepare for other attacks and therefore protect ourselves."
But in rosier news, the US city of Sacramento said it would hold a parade of honour for the three young Americans who tackled the gunman: Alek Skarlatos, a 22-year-old National Guardsman, Spencer Stone, a 23-year-old US Air Force member, and Anthony Sadler, also 23, a student at the state university.
They were awarded the Legion d'Honneur by Hollande on Monday, along with British consultant Chris Norman who helped overwhelm Khazzani.
