French police are evacuating 1,250 people from the Musée du Louvre in Paris after a man attacked a patrolling soldier near the museum’s entrance at 10am today. The attack, which happened on the stairway of the Carrousel du Louvre, an underground shopping centre, has been described as being of a “terrorist nature” by the French Prime Minister Bernard Cazeneuve.
The attacker, who police say shouted “Allahu Akbar” during the assault, was seriously wounded after another soldier fired at him five times. A second man, who was reportedly acting suspiciously at the scene, has been detained.
The Louvre has been closed “until further notice” and a safety zone has been set up around the museum, the Carrousel du Louvre and the gardens. The 1,250 people who were in the area at the time are being evacuated in small groups, according to a spokesman from the Ministry of the Interior. Trains are not stopping at the Palais Royal-Musée du Louvre metro station.
Soldiers have been patrolling the streets of Paris since January 2015 when Isil militants attacked the office of Charlie Hebdo magazine and a kosher supermarket. On 13 November that year, 130 people were killed by gunmen and suicide bombers in a series of coordinated attacks.
The Musée du Louvre, the world’s most visited museum, saw a 15% drop in attendance last year, which it attributed to the sharp fall in the number of foreign tourists to the city.
