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French minister praises passengers in train attack

There were suggestions that the British and American travellers had been specifically targeted by the gunman.

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Sliman Hamzi, an official with police union Alliance, said the suspect is a 26-year-old Moroccan.

The newspaper also reported that he had visited Syria. The items were being photographed by forensics officers at Arras.

According to French media, the intelligence services were aware of the arrested man who has refused to talk to police.

“One had a wound in the neck and the other in the hand”, he said.

The wounded included an American and a Briton. He said the facts were not in yet but said the passengers were “very lucky” the soldiers were aboard the train.

“I would like to express my solidarity to the wounded on the Amsterdam-Paris train”, France’s President Francois Hollande said in a statement.

“Everything is being done to shed light” on the shooting, Hollande said.

But Belgian Prime Minister Charles Michel described the incident as a “terrorist attack”. French Interior Minister Bernard Cazeneuve said the French anti-terrorism prosecutor was investigating the case. The train stopped and the emergency services are on site’.

Pressed to the floor of the carriage, she quickly began snapping pictures on her smartphone – images that swiftly went around the world. They eventually got the attacker under control, Norman said. One Twitter user with a profile called FreedomFilmLLC.com, whose friend Christina Cathleen Coons was aboard, posted a photograph she took of a man on the railway platform at Arras.

The three men – a member of the Air Force, an inactive National Guard member and a civilian – responded quickly, possibly preventing a deadly attack on the high-speed Thalys train. One man, who was shirtless, was pointing a gun at him.

The gunman has since been taken into custody by the local authorities. “He had blood on his face but didn’t appear to be seriously hurt”. After they confronted the suspect, a wild melee broke out on the train and passengers finally helped subdue him.

France remains on a high state of alert following deadly Islamist terror attacks on the Paris headquarters of Charlie Hebdo, a satirical magazine that published cartoons mocking the Islamic “prophet” Mohammed, and a Jewish supermarket, earlier this year.

Police searching the train later found at least one bullet casing, according to a source familiar with the matter.

The attack has not officially been classified as an act of terrorism, although the senior European counterterrorism official indicated it was.

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An armed man opened fire on a high-speed train en route from Amsterdam to Paris, wounding three people, before he was subdued by passengers, led by two Americans.

Shots fired on Amsterdam-to-Paris train, three injured - report