A 54-year-old woman in the suburbs of Seine-Saint-Denis in Paris is seriously injured after a man on the bus sprayed her with a flammable liquid and set her on fire.

The incident took place in the commune of Noisy-le-Sec at around 7:15 pm on Saturday. The attack seems to have been random and unprovoked.

Police arrested a suspect, a 41-year-old man known to authorities, the following day. The man allegedly sprayed the woman with a flammable liquid, possibly gasoline, and then set her on fire before fleeing the bus. The bus driver and the victim’s partner were also injured in the attack.

The prosecutor’s office of Bobigny has stated that an investigation into attempted homicide has been launched.

A witness, a 16-year-old name Ali, said, “there were big flames in the bus. It smelled like something burnt. A man was yelling: ‘Stop! Stop!’ It was very shocking.”

According to prosecutors, the victim was severely burned on the scalp and neck. She was transported to a local hospital but is not in critical condition.

Mayor of Noisy-le-Sec, Olivier Sarrabeyrouse, a member of the French Communist Party (PCF), said he was “shocked, disturbed, and distressed by this tragedy”.

The incident is just the latest act of increasing extreme violence in Paris’s heavily migrant-populated no-go suburbs in recent years.

The attack comes several months after five members of one family, including four children, were killed in a hammer and knife assault in the same commune.