UPDATE: Aug. 21, 2015, 5:08 PM EDT
PARIS (AP) — A gunman opened fire with an automatic weapon on a high-speed train traveling from Amsterdam to Paris Friday, wounding three people before being subdued by two American passengers, officials said.
French Interior Minister Bernard Cazeneuve, speaking in Arras in northern France where the suspected was detained, said one of the Americans was hospitalized with serious wounds. Their names were not immediately released.
Investigators from France’s special anti-terror police are leading the investigation, a spokeswoman for the Paris prosecutor’s office said.
The suspect is a 26-year-old Moroccan, said Sliman Hamzi, an official with police union Alliance, said on French television i-Tele.
The suspect was armed with an automatic rifle and a knife, said Christophe Piednoel, spokesman for national railway operator SNCF.
Cazeneuve said the American passengers “were particularly courageous and showed great bravery in very difficult circumstances” and that “without their sangfroid we could have been confronted with a terrible drama.”
A second person was also seriously wounded in the attack, while a third is being treated for minor injuries.
The attack took place at 1545 GMT while the Thalys train was passing through Belgium, according to a statement from the office President Francois Hollande. Hollande said he’s spoken with Belgian Prime Minister Charles Michel and the two leaders pledged to cooperate closely on the investigation.
Thalys is owned by the French and Belgian railways and operates high-speed trains serving Paris, Brussels, Amsterdam and Cologne, Germany.
French authorities have been on heightened alert since Islamic extremist attacks in January left 20 people dead, including the three attackers.
Copyright 2015 The Associated Press. All rights reserved. This material may not be published, broadcast, rewritten or redistributed.
I’m proud of these Americans for coming to the rescue. I suppose there’s some advantage to living in a gun-crazed culture such as ours: we respond instinctively to gun violence?
Hats off to the heroes! And to those who were injured, best wishes for a full and speedy recovery.
First of all, this is clearly a fake story, because the only way to stop a bad guy…you know the drill.
Second, if Fox news reported that two Americans on a train in Europe showed clear evidence of “sangfroid” and that one of them had to be hospitalized, 7 red-state governors would demand that we close the airports and thousands of Americans would cancel plans to travel to Europe (also to Australia, Asia, South America, Canada, and Hawaii, just in case any of those places were in Europe).
NY Post is saying it was two U.S. Marines that subdued the gunman.
If true, boy did he pick the wrong train car to try this shit.
Based on the number of ammo clips the gunman had at the ready, it appears he planned to massacre a very large number of people. Those who stopped him prevented what would likely have been an absolute bloodbath.
It may have just been 2 people who suddenly learned that they would be brave in such a situation, but I don’t think it is unreasonable to wonder if the memory of the passengers in the plane above Pennsylvania on 9/11 flashed through the minds of the Americans when they realized what was going on.