Photo Credit: AP Photo

French police have arrested three Sudanese nationals in a terror probe after a stabbing spree in the southeast left two people dead, investigators said on Sunday.

A 33-year-old Sudanese asylum seeker was arrested after the attack at Romans-sur-Isère, in the Drôme department in south-east France, on Saturday morning.

The alleged assailant, identified as Abdallah Ahmed-Osman who lives in the town  was arrested without a fight.

The suspect, who arrived in France in 2017 and was granted refugee status and given a 10-year residency permit, moved to Romans-sur-Isère in January after two years in Moras-en-Valloire, to the north, where he worked in a leather goods store.

Police arrested a second Sudanese man aged 28 at Ahmed-Osman’s home shortly after the assault. He was described as an acquaintance of the alleged attacker.

Later Saturday “a young Sudanese man from the same household” as the main suspect was also arrested. He was an assylum seeker.

The national counter-terrorism brigade, PNAT, announced on Saturday evening that it had opened an investigation into “killings and attempted killings connected to a terrorist organisation” and “criminal terrorist conspiracy”.

The suspect entered a tobacconist shop on Saturday morning and allegedly attacked the owner and injured the shopkeeper’s wife when she tried to help her husband. He then went to a nearby butcher’s where witnesses said he jumped over the counter, grabbed another knife and stabbed a customer before running out and attacking passersby in the street.

A computer engineer aged 44 was killed while inside the butcher’s shop. The second casualty, named as Julien Vinson, 55, the owner of La Charrette, a cafe theatre, was stabbed in the street while trying to protect his 12-year-old son.

A third man, aged 63, was in a serious condition in hospital and four other people – two men, 65 and 59, and two women, 48 and 49 – were also injured.

President Emmanuel Macron denounced the attack on Twitter Saturday as “an odious act which casts a shadow over our country which has already been hit hard in recent weeks.”

France is in the third week of a national lockdown over COVID-19, with all but essential businesses shut and people confined to their homes.