Courtney Siverling was in Marseille with three other classmates when she was attacked yesterday morning (Picture: Facebook)

Four American tourists who were attacked with acid at a train station in Marseille have been identified as college students.

Boston College in Massachusetts said the female students were treated for burns at a Marseille hospital after they were sprayed in the face with acid on Sunday morning.

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French authorities are not treating the incident as terror-related. The students were identified as Courtney Siverling, Charlotte Kaufman, Michelle Krug and Kelsey Korsten.

The four women were studying abroad, three of them at the college’s Paris programme.


‘It appears that the students are fine, considering the circumstances, though they may require additional treatment for burns,’ Nick Gozik, who directs Boston College’s Office of International Programs.

Kelsey Kosten was studying with the others at her college’s Paris programme (Picture: Facebook)

‘We have been in contact with the students and their parents and remain in touch with French officials and the U.S. Embassy regarding the incident.’



The director of the college’s Office of International Programs, Nick Gozik, said the women have been released from hospital and ‘it appears that the students are fine, considering the circumstances’.

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A 41-year-old female suspect has been arrested in connection with the attack. Boston College said police described the suspect as ‘disturbed’.

The Paris prosecutor’s office said earlier Sunday that its counter-terrorism division had decided for the time being not to assume jurisdiction for investigating the attack.

The prosecutor’s office in the capital, which has responsibility for all terror-related cases in France, did not explain the reasoning behind the decision.

Michelle Krug (Picture: Facebook)

A spokesman for the prosecutor’s office said the suspect didn’t make any extremist threats or declarations during the attack at the city’s Saint Charles train station.

She said all four of the victims were in their 20s and treated at a hospital, two of them for shock. The suspect was taken into police custody.

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The Marseille fire department was alerted just after 11 am and dispatched four vehicles and 14 firefighters to the train station, a department spokeswoman said.

Two of the Americans were ‘slightly injured’ with acid but did not require emergency medical treatment from medics at the scene, the spokeswoman said.

A person with knowledge of the investigation said the suspect had a history of mental health problems but no apparent past links to extremism.

Charlotte Kaufman (Picture: Facebook)

Regional newspaper La Provence said the assailant remained at the site of the attack without trying to flee.

France has seen scattered attacks by unstable individuals as well as extremist violence in recent years, including in Marseille, a port city in southern France that is closer to Barcelona than Paris.

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A driver deliberately rammed into two bus stops in Marseille last month, killing a woman, but officials said it wasn’t terror-related.

In April, French police said they thwarted an imminent ‘terror attack’ and arrested two suspected radicals in Marseille just days before the first round of France’s presidential election.

Paris prosecutor Francois Molins told reporters the two suspects ‘were getting ready to carry out an imminent, violent action.’

In January 2016, a 15-year-old Turkish Kurd was arrested after attacking a Jewish teacher on a Marseille street. He told police he acted in the name of the Islamic State group.