French judges have handed preliminary charges of attempted murder to a man suspected of stabbing four young children and two adults in a French Alps park.
The suspect, a 31-year-old Syrian refugee with permanent Swedish residency, has a three-year-old daughter living in Sweden, regional prosecutor Line Bonnet-Mathis said.
Witnesses told investigators he mentioned his daughter, his wife and Jesus Christ during the attack on Thursday targeting a playground in the lakeside town of Annecy.
The prosecutor says the victims are no longer in life-threatening condition. The children, between 22 months and three years old, remain hospitalised.
The six victims came from four different countries: France, Britain, the Netherlands and Portugal.
The suspected attacker, whose name was not released, was presented to investigating judges in Annecy on Saturday and given charges of attempted murder and armed resistance, Bonnet-Mathis said. He is in custody pending further investigation.
The suspect refused to talk to investigators, and was examined by a psychiatrist and other doctors who deemed him fit to face charges, the prosecutor said. She said that the motive remained unclear, but it didn’t appear to be terrorism-related.
Witnesses said they heard the attacker mention his daughter, his wife and Jesus Christ, according to the prosecutor, who said he wore a cross and carried two Christian images with him at the time of the attack.
He also had 480 euros ($A770) in cash and a Swedish driver's licence, and had been sleeping in the common area of an Annecy apartment building.
He had travelled to Italy and Switzerland before coming to France last October, and French police are co-ordinating with colleagues in those countries to learn more about his trajectory, said Damien Delaby, director of the regional judicial police.
The child victims were two French two-year-old cousins, a boy and a girl, who were in the playground with their grandmother when the assailant appeared; a British three-year-old girl visiting Annecy with her parents; and a 22-month-old Dutch girl, according to the prosecutor.
French President Emmanuel Macron visited the victims and their families, first responders and witnesses on Friday.
Macron said two young French cousins who were the most critically injured have stabilised, and doctors were "very confident”.
The wounded British girl “is awake, she’s watching television”, Macron added.
The suspect applied for asylum in France last year and was refused a few days before the attack, on the grounds that he had already won asylum in Sweden in 2013, the French interior minister said.
