Police said the attacker shouted “Allahu akbar”, Arabic for “God is the greatest”, the BBC reported.
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A French soldier shot and wounded the armed man who was carrying two bags on his back as he tried to enter the museum in what police said looked like a terrorist attack.
The man’s life is “no longer in danger”, according to the Paris prosecutor, who says his condition Saturday has “markedly improved” after he was shot four times.
He was carrying two backpacks but they did not contain any explosives.
One French soldier was slightly injured. Interior Ministry spokesman Pierre-Henry Brandet said a second person also was arrested but his connection to the attack remains unclear.
The attacker has been hospitalized and is expected to be interrogated. Some 1,000 visitors to the museum were safely moved to secure areas following the incident. However, several local Egyptian media outlets quoted the father of the purported attacker, stating the attacker’s name is Abdullah Reda El-Hemami.
The assailant, who was holding a machete in each hand when he attacked a group of soldiers, was foiled and shot up to five times.
French President Francois Hollande said it was “no doubt” an act of “terrorist nature”.
France is now under a state of emergency after the Paris attacks in 2015, where 130 individuals were killed, and the Bastille Day attack in July 2016 that killed 86 people when the attacker plowed through a celebrating crowd.
The Louvre will reopen today, culture minister Audrey Azoulay said as she visited soldiers guarding the museum as part of heightened security measures.
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“I am concerned following this attack, which bears terrorist characteristics, in the heart of Paris”, Francis Kalifat, the president of the CRIF umbrella group of French Jewish communities, wrote on Twitter.
