An International Relations Professor at the London School of Economics is being blasted on social media after expressing concern about the negative impact a serial child stabbing will have on refugees.
The horrific attack occurred earlier today at a playground Lake Annecy, France. A Syrian man, armed with a knife, entered the play area and began stabbing children. Four very young victims were sent to hospital with brutal injuries, and two pensioners who attempted to intervene are also being treated. Reports say the children were aged three or younger, and at least two were in critical condition.
The gut-wrenching scene was caught on cell phone camera footage which showing the man, wielding a short knife, parading through the playground. In t he video, a mother with a child in a stroller was heard and seen screaming and desperately attempting to move away from the man. It believed the baby in her carriage was one of the victims.
The man appears to be actively seeking children to attack as he ignores adults scrambling to stop him. He wanders in and out of the playground area repeatedly.
The footage of the attack is being circulated on Twitter.
Police have confirmed that the suspect is a 31-year-old Syrian man who had refugee status in Sweden.
French Prime Minister Élisabeth Borne said the suspect is a father of young children himself, and that is family is back in Sweden but he had been seeking asylum in France. In an application he submitted for refugee status in the country, he claimed he was a Syrian Christian.
During the incident, he repeatedly invoked the name of Jesus Christ. The attack was only stopped when police shot him in the legs.
While most are horrified but he attack, several commentators have already begun to speculate what the ramifications of the attack will mean for refugees.
A BBC report released after the attack stated “it is inevitable that the attack will feed into the debate on immigration.”
On Sky News, London School of Economics Professor Fawaz Gerges was interviewed and expressed concern that the attack will be “used by the far right” against refugees.
Gerges’ comments have led to a wildfire of viral incredulity on social media, with many mocking his apparent misplaced concern. Sky News quickly turned off the replies section to the Tweet, but thousands of social media users quickly piled in to condemn the narrative in the quote retweets.
“Sky News have turned off replies to this disgusting tweet, where an “expert” tells us the knifing of children by an asylum seeker in France ‘will be used by the far right,'” GB News journalist Martin Daubney said.
“Four 3-year old children were stabbed with a knife by a maniac, and two of them are now in critical condition, but what the sophisticates are really concerned about right now is that the ‘far right’ may exploit this incident,” Cornell PhD researcher Phillippe Lemoine condemned.
France’s National Assembly has observed a minute of silence and roads are blocked around the scene of the attack.
President Emmanuel Macron tweeted that his nation was in “shock” over the “act of cowardice.”