PARIS (AFP) - A driver shouting "Allahu Akbar" ("God is greatest") ploughed into pedestrians in eastern France on Sunday, injuring 11 of them, just a day after a man yelling the same words was killed in an attack on police officers.
"The man, born in 1974, is apparently imbalanced and had been in a psychiatric hospital," the source told AFP, adding that "for now his motives are still unclear".
The attack came the day after a French convert to Islam was shot dead after attacking three police officers with a knife while also reportedly crying "Allahu Akbar" in the central town of Joue-les-Tours.
The driver in Dijon was arrested by police after targeting passersby at five different places in the city yesterday evening, a police source said.
"Nine people were lightly injured and two others seriously but their lives do not appear to be in danger," the source added.
Witnesses told police that the driver shouted "Allahu Akbar" and "that he was acting for the children of Palestine," a source close to the investigation said.
Interior minister Bernard Cazeneuve told French television station TF1 that the man who was shot dead the day before after attacking a police station in Joue-Les-Tours was "very unstable".
The anti-terror branch of the Paris prosecutor's office has opened a probe into that attack, with the line of inquiry focusing on an attack motivated by radical Islam.
Police sources said the driver was known to police for petty offences dating back to the 1990s.
Prime Minister Manuel Valls took to Twitter to express "solidarity" with those injured in the attack.
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