PARIS: A heavily armed man opened fire on a high-speed train travelling from Amsterdam to Paris on Friday, injuring at least two people before being overpowered by passengers.

The motives behind the attack were not immediately known, although a spokesman for the interior minister said: “It is too early to speak of a terrorist link”.

A spokesman for the French state rail company SNCF said that the assailant was armed with guns and knives but gave no further details about the attack.

The spokesman had said earlier that three people were injured, two of them seriously, and that at least one suffered gunshot wounds. An American and a Briton were reportedly among those injured.

The gunman was arrested after the train pulled into the station in the northern French town of Arras, the SNCF spokesman said.

“The passengers are safe, the situation has been brou­g­ht under control, “train operator Thalys said on Twitter.

French Interior Minister Bernard Cazeneuve was heading to Arras in the wake of the incident, which occur­red shortly after 6pm, his ministry said. His spokesman Pierre-Henry Brandet said that a man had opened fire on the train but said that at this stage “we do not know his motives”.

The French actor Jean-Hugues Anglade, who appeared in the 1986 cult film “Betty Blue” staring Beatrice Dalle, was lightly injured. Thalys said on its website that several trains had been delayed after the “inter­vention of security forces at Arras station”.

Published in Dawn, August 22nd, 2015

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