PARIS: France’s president travelled on Friday to the side of families traumatised by the savage stabbings of four very young children, all said to be in stable condition after emergency surgery, while investigators worked to unravel the motives of a Syrian man taken into custody.

President Emmanuel Macron and his wife Brigitte travelled together to a hospital treating three of the four children who suffered life-threatening knife wounds in Thursday’s still unexplained attack in and around a play park in the Alpine city of Annecy.

Prime minister Elisabeth Borne said all four children — aged between 22 months and 3 years — underwent surgery and “are under constant medical surveillance.” “Their situation is stable,” she said.

Government spokesman Olivier Veran, a medical doctor by training, said two of the children remain critical.

Most of the children were rushed after the attack to a hospital in the French Alpine city of Grenoble — the first stop for Macron and his wife on Friday morning. They did not speak to reporters as they went inside. The fourth injured child was being treated in Geneva.