Toddlers stable after Annecy attack, France lauds ‘backpack hero’

Well-wishers laid flowers on Friday at the site in the French mountain town of Annecy where an attacker stabbed four toddlers, as a shocked nation paid tribute to a backpack-wearing student who tried to stop the assault.
Two of the children were in a critical but stable condition in hospital a day after the attack, Prime Minister Elisabeth Borne said. The other two – and two pensioners who were also wounded – had less serious injuries, officials said.
President Emmanuel Macron, who called the attack an “act of absolute cowardice”, headed to the nearby city of Grenoble on Friday where three of the four are being cared for.
Among the children wounded in the attack where a British national and a Dutch national.
A video of the attack, taken by a bystander and verified by Reuters, showed the assailant jump a low wall into a children’s playground and repeatedly lunge at a child in a stroller, pushing aside a woman who tried to fend him off.