Shots were fired on a Thalys high-speed train between Amsterdam and Paris yesterday evening and several people were injured, the French Interior Ministry said.

A man was arrested when the train stopped at Arras station in northern France but his motives were not yet known, a ministry spokesman said. “A man opened fire on this Thalys train between Amsterdam and Paris, one person was very seriously injured,” ministry spokesman Pierre Henry Brandet said on BFM-TV television.

“Talking about a terrorist motive would be premature at the moment,” he said. Police union official Slimane Hamzi said the 26-year-old man had said he was of Moroccan origin. The wounded included an American and a Briton.

"The man was armed with automatic weapons and knives. He was stopped by passengers," Christophe Piednoel, a spokesman for French railway SNCF said on iTele television. Thalys said in a tweet that travellers were safe and the situation was under control.

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