The 37-year-old man stabbed the mother and her daughters at a French holiday resort in Hautes Alpes, south eastern France, on Tuesday morning.
The mother, aged 46, and her children aged eight to 14 years old were all taken to hospital. The mother was said to be a serious condition while her eight-year-old daughter was the most hurt after suffering a punctured lung. He condition was described as “urgent”.
The attacker was caught by police at the scene as he was trying to flee, and he taken into custody.

While local prosecutor Raphael Balland said that the motive of the attack was “unclear”, adding that the attacker – believed to be a Moroccan man – “uttered no word of a religious connotation”, numerous French media sites have quoted sources saying that the attack was prompted by his anger that the girls and the woman were “too scantily dressed”.
Balland also told France Info radio that the reports the mother and her daughters were attacked for what they were wearing were “just rumours”.