What kind of man walks into a park on a summer’s day and randomly stabs and slashes at toddlers? That is the question France is asking itself today after the latest in a long line of bloody atrocities.

The scene of this morning’s attack was in Annecy in south-eastern France, a popular holiday resort. An eye-witness said that a man ‘started shouting and went straight to the pushchairs and stabbed the children repeatedly.’

At least three children were stabbed, along with a young woman believed to be a mother. The numbers of victims would have been higher had the police not arrived in just four minutes. As they entered the park, recalled another witness, the assailant ‘ran straight up to an old man who was with his wife and stabbed him’.

At least three children were stabbed, along with a young woman believed to be a mother

The man was shot and arrested by police and is now being questioned. According to reports he is a 31-year-old Syrian who last November applied for asylum in France but has since been granted refugee status in Sweden. He is reportedly married to a Swede, is father to a three-year-old and is a Christian.

One or two media outlets shied away from revealing the man’s nationality in the reports of the attack, but once the outrage has subsided this will be the second question that France must confront.

It is one that Emmanuel Macron has continually ducked since he became president in 2017. In the years since, although France has avoided any mass casualty attacks like those inflicted on the country in 2015 and 2016 by Islamic extremists, there have been a spate of grisly crimes in the Republic; in many cases, the perpetrator was a foreigner – and often they had exploited France’s weak border control.

Among the most notorious was the murder of three Christians at a Nice church in 2020 by a Tunisian migrant, the machete attack on two journalists by a Pakistani the same year, the fatal stabbing of three young men by a Sudanese refugee in Angers last year, and the rape and murder in November of a 12-year-old Parisian girl, allegedly by an Algerian woman who had outstayed her visa.

The centre-right Republicans and Marine Le Pen’s National Rally were both accused by the government and the left of exploiting Lola’s death for political gain. They angrily refuted the charge, stating that they drew so much attention to the appalling crime because they want to ensure that no other French youngsters lose their lives because of political and judicial incompetence.

This morning Eric Ciotti, the leader of the Republicans, expressed his anger that the suspect ‘has the same profile that we often find in these types of attack’. Jordan Bardella, president of the National Rally tweeted that: ‘Barbarity struck this morning in Annecy, in a knife attack on young children, perpetrated by what is believed to be a Syrian migrant asylum seeker.’

Immigration and asylum have dominated much of the political and media debate in recent weeks; as in Britain, there is a belief among the majority of the population in France that the government has lost control of its borders and, worse, that they aren’t really bothered by the fact.

After the death of Lola, the government promised that a tough new immigration bill would be tabled in March; but it wasn’t, amid reports that the left wing of Macron’s party finds the idea of tighter border controls unpalatable. The bill still hasn’t seen the light of day. Perhaps it will now.