The Duke and Duchess are meeting with survivors of one Paris attack… just in time for another one.
William and Kate were stopping in to pay respects to survivors of the recent attack on Paris:
The Duke and Duchess of Cambridge have sympathised with survivors of Paris’ devastating Bataclan terrorist attack, praising their bravery and the “amazing progress” of their recovery.
The royal couple met a 25-year-old, known only as Jessica, who was shot seven times in the leg, hip and back as she dined with friends at La Belle Equipe restaurant in Paris in 2015, and Kevin, 28, a Bataclan concert-goer shot in the leg.
As the couple visited the hospital where the pair have been treated, reports came in of a terrorist incident at Paris Orly Airport, but a Kensington Palace spokesman said the royal visit was not affected.
The Duke and Duchess chat to Les Invalides patients – two Parisians wounded in the recent Paris attacks #RoyalVisitParis pic.twitter.com/ijX3d5xZe5
— Kensington Palace (@KensingtonRoyal) March 18, 2017
Only to have it interrupted by yet another incident.
(They were only 6 miles away when it happened.)
A convicted criminal with links to radical Islam sent a text message to his brother and father stating ‘I shot the police’, shortly before he was shot dead during an attack at Paris Orly airport.
The 39-year-old, named locally as career criminal Ziyed Ben Belgacem, was killed after wrestling a soldier’s gun from her and fleeing into a McDonald’s.
Less than two hours earlier he had shot a female police officer in the head in a northern Paris suburb after being stopped for speeding.
The Paris prosecutors’ office said he was suspected of having terror links, and Ben Belgacem’s home was among scores searched in November 2015 following attacks which killed 130 people.…The 39-year-old, who was driving a Renault Clio, pulled out a shotgun and fired at the officers while he was fetching his ID.
He sped off, and the car was found abandoned 11 miles away at Vitry, south of Paris.
He then hijacked a woman’s Citroen Picasso at gunpoint, and this second car was later found parked at the airport.…Zied B. had previously been jailed for drug trafficking and authorities believe he was radicalised in prison.
He first came to police notice in the late 1990s, when he was involved in a series of bank robberies in the Paris suburb. —DailyMail
https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=2Rg_9W4O99w
He then went to the airport and attacked some soldiers there.
There are conflicting reports of what happened, whether there was a physical struggle, guns raised on both sides, or soldiers trying to reason with him.
In any case, the result was the same: one scumbag shot dead on the airport floor.
It was a bad situation, but one that could have been so much worse.
(So much for Clooney’s digs at Trump about how ‘safe’ Paris is.)
Well done, security. Well, done.
