Paris (CNN) A man was arrested after attempting to drive his vehicle through a crowd gathered outside a mosque in the Paris suburb of Creteil on Thursday, police said.

France's Le Parisien newspaper reports that the man said he wanted "to take revenge for the Bataclan and Champs-Elysees" attacks.

The man rammed his SUV into protective barriers outside the Creteil mosque "multiple times" around 6:30 pm local time, according to a police statement.

"Because he couldn't get through the barriers, he tried to go down another route but hit an obstacle and fled," police said.

"We saw the car drive around the mosque three times," an eyewitness told Le Parisien . "It was strange. All of a sudden it sped up. It seemed to me that it was clearly trying to knock over pedestrians."