Authorities in southern France have detained a Moroccan man they say stabbed a woman and her three daughters at an Alps resort, briefly sparking panic in a nation reeling from its third major terrorist attack in 18 months.
Jean-Marc Duprat, a deputy mayor for the town of Laragne-Monteglin in the Hautes-Alpes region, says the mother and her girls, aged 8, 12 and 14, were vacationing at a nearby resort when a man from a neighbouring apartment attacked them on Tuesday morning as they ate their breakfast.
All four were expected to recover, the deputy mayor said.
Duprat initially said the man was upset that the girls were wearing shorts and T-shirts. He later said that did not appear to be the case and that the attacker's motive was not known.
"At this time, we don't have a firm answer," Raphael Balland, prosecutor for the region, told reporters.
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Balland said the attacker, who was on vacation with his wife and children, was brandishing an 8-centimetre, folding knife.
The youngest girl, who was the most gravely wounded, was out of danger following surgery at the hospital in Grenoble, Duprat said.
Her mother and her two sisters were recovering at the hospital in Gap, a town closer to where the violence occurred.
Laragne-Monteglin is 180 kilometres northwest of Nice, where a Tunisian man killed 84 people on July 14 by driving a truck through a holiday crowd on Bastille Day.
