Knifeman shot dead by police after fatal stabbing in Bordeaux

Police said they do not initially think the attack is terror-related

Police officers stand in a street after a man stabbed and killed one person and injured another before being killed by police as he fled, in Bordeaux, south-western France, on April 10, 2024 (AFP via Getty Images)

A man armed with a knife has been shot dead by police in Bordeaux after he fatally stabbed one person and wounded another.

The attack happened around 7.50pm on Wednesday at the reflecting pool near the banks of the Garonne river in the southwestern port city.

The stabbing was likely "a brawl with an unknown motive,” with "no terrorist connotation for the moment,” a police source told AFP.

The stabbing victims were both men of Algerian descent, and the injured man is not yet in stable condition, France’s BFMTV reports.

“The quays of Bordeaux, the beating heart of our city, are this evening struck by death,” France’s public accounts minister Thomas Cazenave, who also serves as a municipal and metropolitan counsellor in Bordeaux, wrote on X in French. “I think of the victims, the police officers who intervened and of all of us, Bordelais moved by this tragedy.”

Officials have not described any religious motivation for the attack nor described the knifeman’s religious background.

However, French outlet Sud Ouest reports that the knifeman allegedly accused his two victims of drinking alcohol during the incident, which took place the same day as Eid al-Fitr, the holiday marking the end of the Muslim holy month of Ramadan.

A man named Mohamed, also Algerian, told the outlet he was partying that morning under the arch of the city’s nearby Bir-Hakeim gate with one of the victims and later heard the victim get in a fight with the alleged attacker.

“It was our friend Daoud who was killed,” he said in French in an interview with the publication.  

“There are sometimes knife fights,” he added, “but this time it went too far. We never imagined this could happen.

Another eyewitness told the outlet about seeing police shoot a man holding a knife.

The Bordeaux prosecutor’s office has not yet commented.

Bordeaux’s interdepartmental judicial police service is investigating the case.

The shooting comes at a time of elevated security alertness across France, which is four months away from hosting the 2024 Summer Olympics.

On Wednesday night, a football match in Paris between Paris St-Germain and Barcelona took place under heightened security measures, following a threat from the Islamic State.