Louvre attack keeps violence in spotlight in French campaign

An attack at Paris’s Louvre museum Friday ensured that terrorism and security will remain front and center of a roller coaster presidential election that has brought the populist National Front closer than ever to power in France.

A large section of central Paris was cordoned off after a soldier fired five shots at an assailant who was armed with a machete and crying “Allah Akbar,” which means “God is great” in Arabic. The attacker is alive and has been taken into custody and the incident appears to be over without fatalities.

The episode is a reminder of the multiple deadly attacks that killed more than 200 people in France in just over two years and may feed a sense of insecurity that has helped Marine Le Pen – the National Front’s anti-immigrant, law-and-order candidate – move into the lead in polls for the first round of the presidential election. Still, those same surveys suggest she’d lose heavily in the run-off on May 7 no matter whom she faces.

The attacker, who was shot in the stomach area by soldiers he attacked with machetes in both hands at Paris’s Louvre museum, is a 29-year-old Egyptian unknown to French intelligence services, Paris Prosecutor Francois Molins said in a press conference in Paris. The attacker, currently in a life-threatening condition, arrived in Paris Jan. 26 from Dubai, Molins said.

Terrorism is the No. 1 concern for most French voters, according to an Elabe poll published in November. About 46 percent of respondents cited the threat of further attacks as an important issue, compared with 40 percent worried about unemployment and 35 percent focused on immigration.

The National Front “can make the most hay” with terrorist incidents “because it’s a law and order philosophy that the party is pursuing,” Moritz Kraemer, chief sovereign ratings officer at Standard & Poor’s said on Bloomberg Television. Mark Deen, Bloomberg