Gavin Mortimer Gavin Mortimer

How many more knife attacks can France take?

France’s Interior Minister Bruno Retailleau (Credit: Getty images)

Each day in France there are 120 knife attacks. On Saturday, one such incident resulted in the death of 14-year-old Elias as he left his football training in central Paris. He was stabbed after refusing to surrender his mobile phone. A 17-year-old has admitted the killing to police.

France’s Interior Minister, Bruno Retailleau, expressed his horror at the death of Elias, and reiterated his determination to make France ‘a country where parents no longer have to fear seeing their child murdered for nothing’. He added that it ‘will be a long and difficult road’ and will require an end to the culture of excuses which ‘has plunged some of our young people into a deep sense of impunity’.

Bruno Retailleau declared that France is encircled by what he called ‘four fires’

Since he assumed his position in September last year, Retailleau has spent an inordinate amount of his time issuing grave warnings about the lawlessness of the country.

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