Paris, Sep 10: Seven people have been injured in an attack by a man armed with a knife and an iron bar in the French capital, the police said.

The incident that took place on Sunday night on the banks of a canal in the 19th arrondissement, in the northeast of the capital, was not initially being treated as terrorism, officials were cited as saying by the BBC.

The attacker, said to be an Afghan national, was later arrested by the police. The man's motives and identity were not immediately known. Two British tourists were among the injured.

The assailant attacked strangers, initially stabbing two men and a woman near the MK2 cinema on the Quai de Loire, along the Ourcq canal, shortly before 11 p.m, according to the newspaper Le Parisien and the news channel BFM TV.

A group of men playing pétanque nearby tried to stop him -- one of them threw his pétanque ball at him -- but the attacker continued down a side street and attacked more people, including the British tourists, the reports said.

"We are urgently investigating this incident and are in close contact with the French authorities," the UK Foreign Office said in a statement.

"Solidarity with the victims and profound gratitude for the firefighters and the emergency services who immediately arrived, and for the police forces who enabled the arrest," Mounir Mahjoubi, the junior minister for digital affairs in the French government, tweeted.

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New Delhi, May 17 (PTI): Congress leader Rahul Gandhi on Saturday hit out at the government for "informing" Pakistan about targeting terror infrastructure as part of Operation Sindoor, saying it was a crime and asking who had authorised it.

In a post on X, Gandhi questioned External Affairs Minister (EAM) S Jaishankar for publicly admitting that the government of India (GOI) had informed Pakistan of the action and asked how many aircraft the Indian Air Force lost as a result.

"Informing Pakistan at the start of our attack was a crime. EAM has publicly admitted that GOI did it. Who authorised it? How many aircraft did our air force lose as a result?" said Gandhi, the leader of opposition in the Lok Sabha.

He also shared an undated video of Jaishankar saying India had informed Pakistan of the action against terror infrastructure on its soil.

Jaishankar can be heard saying in the video, "At the start of the operation, we had sent a message to Pakistan, saying, 'We are striking at terrorist infrastructure and we are not striking at the military.'"

"So the military has the option of standing out and not interfering in this process. They chose not to take that good advice," the minister can be heard saying in the clip.

The Press Information Bureau (PIB), however, has debunked claims that Jaishankar had said India informed Pakistan ahead of Operation Sindoor. In a post on X, the PIB's Fact Check Unit said the minister had not made any such statement and that he was being misquoted.

Operation Sindoor was the Indian offensive against terror camps in Pakistan and Pakistan-occupied Kashmir (PoK) following the April 22 terror attack in Pahalgam.