JEDDAH: A Saudi man was arrested outside the French consulate in the Red Sea city of Jeddah after attacking and wounding a security guard with a ‘sharp tool’ amid heightened anti-France sentiment across the Muslim world.
The attack was reported within hours after a knife-wielding man, reportedly shouting “Allahu Akbar”, beheaded a woman and killed two other people in the French city of Nice earlier in the day.
According to a statement from the Makkah region’s police, the French consulate’s guard suffered ‘minor injuries’ and that ‘legal action’ was being taken against the perpetrator.
The French Embassy, in this regard, said that the consulate was subject to an attack by knife which targeted a guard, adding the guard was taken to hospital and his life was not in danger.
“The French Embassy strongly condemns this attack against a diplomatic outpost which nothing could justify,” it said, adding that the embassy affirms its full support for the victim and expresses its confidence in the Saudi authorities to uncover the circumstances of the accident and ensure the security of French facilities and the French community in the Kingdom of Saudi Arabia.
Anti-French sentiment has been high across many Muslim countries this week owing to the French president Emmanuel Macron’s perceived attacks on French Muslims and support for the right to caricature the Prophet Muhammad (S.A.W).
Leaders of several Muslim-majority nations, state-affiliated and independent media outlets, and clerical establishments in several countries have called for boycotts against French products.
The tensions increased after an assailant decapitated a French middle school teacher who showed caricatures of the Prophet Muhammad (S.A.W) for a class on free speech. Those caricatures were published by Charlie Hebdo and cited by the men who gunned down the newspaper’s editorial meeting in 2015.
