France is investigating Monday’s ramming incident near Paris, in which three officers were injured, as a terrorist attack, The Associated Press reports. The assailant is a 29-year-old Frenchman who claimed allegiance to the Islamic State (ISIS) jihadist group. The incident occurred in the northwestern Paris suburb of Colombes, while police were conducting an ID check. The driver slammed into police cars and police motorcycles, sending three officers to the hospital, the national counter-terrorism prosecution office said in a statement Tuesday. The driver was arrested, and investigators found a knife in his car along with a letter pledging allegiance to ISIS and claiming to want to impose Islamic sharia law around the world, the statement said. Initial reports said that the attacker said he targeted the officers because he wanted to avenge events in “Palestine”. Counter-terrorism prosecutors decided to take over the investigation after the driver underwent a psychological examination Tuesday and was found to be of sound mind, according to AP . The man, who was not identified, is facing possible charges of links to criminal terrorism and attempted killing of officers in connection with a terrorist enterprise, the statement said. France has been hit by a number of attacks claimed by the Islamic State (ISIS) in recent years, the biggest one being the attack in November of 2015 in which 129 people were murdered. More than 250 people have been killed in total in France since the start of 2015, when 12 people were murdered in an attack on the offices of the satirical magazine Charlie Hebdo attack. Following the Charlie Hebdo attack, a man linked to ISIS shot and killed a policewoman in a Paris suburb before taking hostages at the Hyper Cacher kosher supermarket the following day, killing four more people. In January, a 22-year-old radicalized man stabbed one person to death and injured two others in a park in the Paris area. Earlier this month, a man armed with a knife attacked people south of Lyon, killing two people. A terror probe was subsequently launched into the incident.
