A soldier guarding a major Parisian railway station on Monday was stabbed by a man armed with a knife, who was then arrested, Interior Minister Gerald Darmanin said.

The attack at the Gare de l’Est station in northern Paris came less than two weeks before the start of the Olympic Games in the French capital.

The soldier’s life was not in danger, Mr Darmanin said on X, formerly Twitter, while a police source told AFP that he had suffered a shoulder wound.

The suspect is a 40-year-old Frenchman born in the Democratic Republic of Congo, a police source said.

He “said he is Christian and shouted ‘God is great’ in French” at the moment of the attack, another police source added.

The suspect said he attacked the soldier “because the military kills people in his country”, the second source said.

”Thoughts to the soldier injured tonight at the Gare de l’Est,” Armed Forces Minister Sebastien Lecornu wrote on X, paying tribute to the French troops protecting citizens.

The soldier was deployed within Operation Sentinelle, a 3,000-strong unit which patrols prominent sites such as railway stations, places of worship, schools and theatres, after a string of deadly Islamic extremist attacks in 2015. 

Soldiers in the Sentinelle force have been targeted in the past.

Earlier this year, Prime Minister Gabriel Attal placed an additional 3,000 troops on standby for Sentinelle.