Car Crashes Into Pizza Restaurant In Sept-Sorts, France, Killing Young Girl And Injuring Several Seriously

The driver 'clearly acted intentionally', police said.

A young girl died and 12 people were injured, four seriously, when a car was driven into a pizza restaurant in France on Monday.

The incident happened in the village of Sept-Sorts, east of Paris, at around 8.30pm local time. It was deliberate but not terrorism, the local prosecutor’s office said.

The age of the girl was initially reported to be eight but FranceInfo later reported she was 13.

@BFMTV Voiture dans la pizzeria à Sept-sorts ! pic.twitter.com/iDkcoixaEr

— HoolaChoup (@HoolaChoup) August 14, 2017

According to AFP, one of those seriously injured in the crash was a three-year-old boy, who was airlifted to a children’s hospital in Paris.

The driver was arrested, according to the national gendarme service. Police said he had “clearly acted intentionally”.

French gendarmes maintain a roadblock a certain distance from the scene where a car ploughed into the outdoor terrace of a pizzeria, killing a young girl and injuring several other people
French gendarmes maintain a roadblock a certain distance from the scene where a car ploughed into the outdoor terrace of a pizzeria, killing a young girl and injuring several other people
Benoit Tessier / Reuters
Police stop a car at the roadblock after the incident
Police stop a car at the roadblock after the incident
Benoit Tessier / Reuters

RTL radio reported the driver said he wanted to kill himself and claimed to have weapons in the car.

The driver is French and 32, the BBC reported.

“Half of the car entered the restaurant and knocked down all the customers and staff in its way,” a soldier told Le Parisien newspaper.

The news follows the intentional use of cars as weapons, such as in the Westminster attack in March.

An Algerian man drove his car into a group of French soldiers last week, injuring six of them.

A truck attack in Nice left 86 people dead a little more than a year ago.

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