Patrolling French soldier wounded in Paris attack

PARIS - A 23-year-old French soldier was assaulted Saturday from behind with a blade while patrolling near some shops at the metro station in La Defense, a business district on the western edge of Paris.

The soldier, who wasn’t identified, was taken to a military hospital with serious injuries that aren’t life-threatening, Pierre-Andre Peyvel, prefect of Hauts-de-Seine, told reporters at the scene in an interview televised by i-Tele.

The lone attacker was described as a young man wearing a Muslim prayer cap and a North African-style robe called a jellabah and was wielding a box cutter, police and subway authorities said.

According to a police account, he was monitored on security cameras and seen shedding his robe and fleeing in Western clothes before disappearing into the crowd in a subway and suburban train entrance.

“We will study all hypotheses,” French President Francois Hollande said in a televised statement from Ethiopia. “We still don’t know the exact circumstances surrounding the attack.”

Last week, two men attacked a 25-year-old British soldier, Lee Rigby, killing him with knives and cleavers in the middle of a road in London across from an army barracks.

The suspects, one of whom was linked to an Islamist organization, were shot during their arrest and are still hospitalized as police investigate.

Elements of Saturday’s assault, in particular “the sudden violence of the attack”and the “very violent” targeting of a soldier, are similar to the London attack, Interior Minister Manuel Valls said in an interview on i-Tele.

Valls called for “prudence,” saying that investigators are still trying to understand the circumstances of the attack.

The soldier was part of a team of military personnel and police working in the area with the “Vigipirate” campaign to ensure security, according to an e-mailed statement from the Interior and Defense ministries.

French security forces have been on heightened alert since the country launched a military intervention in the African nation of Mali in January to regain territory seized by Islamic radicals. British Prime Minister David Cameron was in Paris meeting with Hollande when he first received word of the London attack.

Last year, three French paratroopers were killed by a man police described as a French-born Islamic extremist who then went on to attack a Jewish school in south France, killing four more people.

Information for this article was contributed by Lori Hinnant and Sylvia Hui of The Associated Press; and by Edward Cody of The Washington Post.