A 25-year-old Moroccan man, known to Belgian, French and Spanish authorities, has been confirmed by French police as the gunman subdued by passengers on a high-speed train bound for Paris.
Heavily armed, Ayoub el-Khazani boarded the Amsterdam-Paris Thalys train on Friday [local time] in Brussels and, during the journey, emerged from a lavatory bearing a Kalashnikov assault rifle, an automatic pistol, nine cartridge clips and a box-cutter.
A Briton and two US servicemen are being hailed as heroes after overpowering the gunman.
French police say el-Khazani was known to intelligence services as a radical Islamist who went to Syria in 2014. He boarded the Eurostar rail link to Britain at Brussels’ Gare du Midi.
Security measures on the high-speed Thalys trains between France, Belgium, the Netherlands and Germany were immediately upgraded following the attack, with increased patrols and baggage checks at international rail stations.
Across European rail services, security has been stepped up in anticipation of “blowback” attacks – rebound of violence from one area to another – by jihadis returning from Syria.
The post Security heightened across European rail after gunman attack appeared first on Travel Monitor.