Four children including a British girl remained in intensive care on Friday following a series of savage knife attacks by a Syrian refugee in eastern France.
Abdelmasih Hanoun, 31, faces attempted murder charges following the assaults by Lake Annecy, in the Alps, on Thursday morning.
He first targeted two French cousins named as Ennio and Alba, both two, and then attacked Ettie, a three-year-old English girl on holiday with her parents, and Peter, a 22-month-old Dutch boy.
On Friday, Ennio and Alba remained in hospital in the nearby city of Grenoble, where their condition was described as “critical”.
Ettie was in the same hospital and her condition was “stable” while Peter was also “stable” having been transferred to a specialist medical unit in Geneva.
Line Bonnet-Mathis, the Annecy Prosecutor who is leading the investigation into the crimes, said: “We are dealing with very young victims whose state of health is still extremely fragile. All are in intensive care.”
Two adults were also slashed with a knife by Hanoun – Manuel, 70, and Yusuf, 78, who was also hit by police bullet in error.
Hanoun himself was also treated after being shot by police before his arrest, but was still well enough to talk to officers.
He described himself as a ‘Syrian-Christian’, who was filmed saying ‘In the name of Jesus Christ’ throughout the attack, said an investigating source.
The divorced father of a three-year-old girl was refused asylum in France six days ago and faced being deported.
Despite this, he had been sleeping rough in Annecy, with no attempt by the authorities to monitor his movements.
Gérald Darmanin, France’s interior minister, said this was a ‘troubling coincidence’, adding: “For reasons not well explained he had sought asylum in Switzerland, Italy and France.”
Hanoun arrived in Sweden 10 years ago, having served in the Syrian Army during the country’s ongoing civil war.
He married a Swedish woman he had met in Turkey, and they went on to have a daughter, now aged three, before the couple separated around eight months ago.
Hanoun was twice refused Swedish citizenship, and this is thought to have motivated him to move to France alone.
The multiple stabbings follow a series of similar crimes in France dating back to 2015, most of them linked to Islamist terrorism.
There were no early indications as to the motive of the latest attack, said Ms Bonet-Mathis.
