Americans, Briton who thwarted attack get France’s top honor

The gunman has been identified as 26-year-old Moroccan Ayoub El-Khazzani and is being questioned by French counterterrorism police outside Paris.

France’s counter-terrorism police can hold Khazzani for up to 96 hours without charge. “He and his brother were very devout, they dressed like Afghans and all that, but I can’t believe this”, one young resident said to The Telegraph.

Skarlatos disputed a statement the gunman made, through a lawyer, that he just wanted to rob the train because he was hungry.

His father, Mohammed el Khazzani, was quoted by Spanish newspaper El Mundo as saying he had not spoken to his son since he left the Spanish port town of Algeciras for France in 2014.

Beyond that, there appears to be a disagreement between French and Spanish sources about who knew what and when. The French transmitted this information to Spain, which advised on May 21 that he no longer lived there but in Belgium.

Stone said he was stabbed in the neck and sliced on his hand.

Bullets started flying and two American servicemen, with help from an American friend and a Briton, tackled and disarmed him.

Skarlatos said military training played a part in subduing the gunman, who was apparently acting alone. “Go, ‘” Skarlatos said. “I didn’t talk about anything else with him but he was uptight, standoffish”. In times of terror like that to please do something.

He plans to stay in Germany with Stone until he is released, she said Monday.

“We’d like to invite them to a rally to honor them and give them time to interact with current students”, said Trent Allen, spokesman for the San Juan Unified School District in Sacramento County, California, where Skarlatos and Stone attended high school.

“A man’s throat had been slit”, Sadler said. He’s on vacation, having just returned from his deployment in Afghanistan.

“The guy had a lot of ammo”, said Skarlatos, a National Guardsman based in Oregon.

More importantly, President Francois Hollande hailed their actions as an example of how citizens can react in the fact of growing terrorist threats.

VIDEO SHOWED A BLOOD-SPATTERED scene on the train, with the gunman prostrate and shirtless, his hands tied behind his back.

The attacker carried no identification or administrative documents, the French official said.

French actor Jean-Hugues Anglade, who cut his finger to the bone while activating the train’s emergency alarm, heaped praise on the Americans, recounting the high emotion of the episode to Paris Match.

“I am happy that no one got hurt”, he said. “Yes, we saw ourselves dying because we were prisoners in this train and it was impossible to escape the nightmare”. They then worked together to subdue him and restrain him before the train arrived in Arras, France.

Stone, whose thumb was nearly severed by the attacker, has also been credited with saving the life of another passenger who had been shot and was bleeding profusely.

That victim, wounded in the chest, remained hospitalized in intensive care Sunday in “serious but stable” condition, and his life is not in danger, according to Patrick Goldstein, head of the emergency service at CHRU Lille hospital.

“It is clear that their heroic actions may have prevented a far worse tragedy”, said President Barack Obama, who phoned the three Americans.

A gunman who was overpowered by passengers on a French train is known to European authorities as a suspected radical Islamist if he has given his true identity, France’s interior minister has said.