Vacationing U.S. soldiers thwart massacre on high-speed train

By Vince Chadwick

Passengers subdue gunman who opened fire on Paris-bound train.

A suspected terrorist opened fire inside a high-speed train near the Belgian-French border Friday afternoon, injuring at least two people before being tackled by passengers, including two holidaying U.S. servicemen.
The Amsterdam-Paris train carrying 554 passengers stopped at Arras in northern France where the injured were unloaded and the suspect — 25-year-old Moroccan, Ayoub el-Khazani, who was apparently known to EU security agencies for holding radical jihadist views — was arrested.

According to initial reports, two U.S. servicemen on holiday (Spencer Stone, who is in the Air Force, and National Guardsman Alek Skarlatos) rushed the gunman who began firing a Kalashnikov rifle as the train traveled south near the Belgian-French border around 6pm.
The pair’s traveling companion, Anthony Sadler, told Associated Press: “We heard a gunshot, and we heard glass breaking behind us, and saw a train employee sprint past us down the aisle.”
Sadler said they then saw the gunman enter their train car with an automatic rifle.
“As he was cocking it to shoot it, Alek just yells, ‘Spencer, go!’ And Spencer runs down the aisle … Spencer makes first contact, he tackles the guy, Alek wrestles the gun away from him, and the gunman pulls out a box cutter and slices Spencer a few times. And the three of us beat him until he was unconscious.”
A Pentagon spokesperson was quoted as saying that one U.S. military member received injuries that were “not life-threatening.”
French interior minister Bernard Cazeneuve told said Saturday that Stone was hospitalized, along with another American passenger who was shot in the shoulder, though neither are in critical condition.

The mayor of Arras, Frédéric Leturque, tweeted a photo of the passengers (from left: Anthony Sadler from California, Alek Skarlatos from Oregon, and Chris Norman from Britain) as they received bravery medals.

Norman told a news conference in Arras: “I came in at the end of it all and helped get him under control.”

The gunman reportedly boarded the train in Brussels, where luggage does not pass security screening. In addition to the Kalashnikov rifle with nine clips of ammunition, he was also carrying an automatic pistol and a box-cutter.
Cazeneuve said el-Khazani was brought to the attention of French authorities by Spain in February 2014, “due to his involvement in radical Islamist movements.”
Cazeneuve said: “This led the French authorities to place him on a watch list to monitor him should he return to French territory.”
A Spanish anti-terror source told AFP, el-Khazani “lived in (southern) Spain in Algeciras for a year, until 2014, then he decided to move to France. Once in France he went to Syria, then returned to France.”
Cazeneuve said that in 2015 el-Khazani lived in Belgium and that Belgian authorities have opened their own inquiry.
Belgian justice minister Koen Geens told reporters el-Khazani was known to Belgian authorities, having been flagged by other countries’ security services as a potential jihadist.
“You understand, we receive many names like this,” Geens said.
A Saturday meeting of the Belgian national security council decided to increase joint French-Belgian patrols in high-speed Thalys trains, and to reinforce police patrols in stations and public places.
El-Khazani is being held near Paris by anti-terror police under legislation, which allows him to be detained for up to 96 hours.
On Friday, Cazeneuve traveled to Arras, where he said: “Together with the president and the prime minister I want to express to these two American passengers — who were particularly courageous and showed great bravery in very difficult circumstances — all our gratitude, recognition and admiration for their composure that they showed and without which we could have been confronted with a terrible drama.”
Belgian Prime Minister Charles Michel condemned what he called a “terrorist attack,” while in a statement U.S. President Barack Obama “expressed his profound gratitude for the courage and quick thinking of several passengers, including US service members, who selflessly subdued the attacker.”
French President François Hollande has spoken to the French and American passengers who intervened and “conveyed the gratitude of all of France,” Cazeneuve said.
The passengers will be received at the Elysée Palace “in the coming days,” according to a statement by the president’s office.