Louvre Attacker Is Egyptian

French investigators believe the man who launched a machete attack outside the Louvre in Paris, before being shot and wounded by a soldier, is a 29-year-old Egyptian who entered the country on a tourist visa.

The incident has thrust security and terror threat back into the limelight three months before elections in France, with authorities saying it was a “terrorist” assault, NDTV reported.

“The attacker, in a black t-shirt bearing a skull design and armed with two 40-centimeter machetes, lunged at four patrolling French soldiers,” Paris Prosecutor Francois Molins told a press conference.

One of the troops was struck on the head and another fell to the ground outside the famous Paris museum after the assailant attacked. The second soldier managed to open fire and hit the machete-wielder in the stomach.

A source later said that the suspect’s condition had stabilized. He was shot five times.

Terrorist Nature

The attacker who is thought to live in the UAE, is believed to have entered France legally on a flight from Dubai on January 26, a source said.

An Egyptian passport, thought to be the suspect’s, was found during a search of an apartment.

Investigators are examining the Twitter account of an Egyptian man named Abdallah El Hamahmy after around a dozen messages were posted in Arabic just minutes prior to the attack.

He had made reference to the IS group in a tweet a minute later.

The UAE government condemned the “hateful crime” and assured France of its “full solidarity”.

As French authorities probed the attacker’s background, President Francois Hollande said that “there is little doubt as to the terrorist nature of this act”, an assessment echoed by Prime Minister Bernard Cazeneuve.

France was already reeling from a string of terror attacks over the last two years and the country has been under a state of emergency since November 2015.