Three French soldiers who were conducting a patrol outside a Jewish center in the southern city of Nice as part of the country’s recently upgraded counter-terrorism campaign were attacked by a man wielding a knife on Tuesday.

AFP reports that two of the soldiers were wounded and their lives are not in danger, while French police union official Sarah Baron said the precise extent of the wounds are not yet clear.

The stabber was arrested, but two associates of his are thought to have escaped after the attack occurred in the center of the city, near the Galeries Lafayette department store and the Consistoire Israélite de Nice Jewish organization, Baron told The Associated Press.

The identity of the stabber is as yet unknown.

Earlier on Tuesday French police arrested eight people suspected of involvement in a network that sent Muslim terrorists to Syria to wage jihad. The arrests centered around Paris and the southeastern city of Lyon.

Some 1,400 people living in France have either joined the jihadist terror groups in Syria and Iraq or are planning to, Prime Minister Manuel Valls said last month.

France has launched several raids targeting alleged jihadists after a trio of Islamist gunmen murdered 17 people around Paris in a three-day rampage in January, including a hostage crisis at a kosher supermarket in which four Jews were murdered.

Since then France has dispatched its army to defend the nation, with Jewish institutions receiving particular attention as prime targets for Muslim terrorists.