Tourists head back to Champs Elysees:
Known terror suspect kills French cop, wounds 2 others at famous tourist spot Don says attack to have effect on election
Paris, April 21: A known terror suspect shot dead a French policeman and wounded two others on Champs Elysees here on Thursday before being killed in return fire just a few hundred metres from the Arc de Triomphe in an attack claimed by the ISIS days before the presidential election.
The killer, identified as 39-year-old French man Karim Cheurfi, was known to anti-terror police. Three of his family members were taken into custody, a legal source said on Friday. The ISIS in a statement identified the attacker as “Abu Yousif alBelgiki (the Belgian)”.
A handwritten note praising the ISIS was found near Cheurfi, who had opened fire on a parked police vehicle with an automatic rifle. Besides, a copy of the Koran, a pump action shotgun and knives were found in his car, the police said.
A potential second suspect was identified as Youssouf El Osri in a document seen by Reuters. Belgian security officials had warned French counterparts before the attack that El Osri was a ‘very dangerous individual en route to France” aboard the Thalys high-speed train. French ministry spokesman Pierre-Henry Brandet said that a man with the same name had turned himself into the Belgian police.
Cheurfi was arrested in February on suspicion of plotting to kill officers but was released because of lack of evidence. He lived with his mother in the eastern Paris suburb of Chelles, and had served 10 years in prison after firing on two plainclothes officers in 2001. While in detention, he shot and wounded a prison officer after seizing his gun.
Released on probation in 2015 from a further twoyear jail term imposed for lesser offences, Cheurfi was arrested again in February after threatening to kill police officers, but released for lack of evidence.
The impact on the outcome of the election is unclear, but far-right leader Marine Le Pen, her centrist rival Emmanuel Macron, and scandal-hit conservative Francois Fillon cancelled campaign events planned for Friday. —AFP, Reuters Washington, April 21: US President Donald Trump on Friday said a deadly attack in Paris claimed by the ISIS group “will have a big effect” on France’s upcoming presidential vote.
“Another terrorist attack in Paris. The people of France will not take much more of this. Will have a big effect on presidential election!” he said, breaking a silence over Sunday’s vote in a tweet.
Mr Trump tweeted hours after a gunman shot dead a policeman and wounded two others on the worldfamous Champs Elysees boulevard.
The attack rocked France’s presidential race on Friday with just days to go before one of the closest races in recent memory. France is in a state of emergency and at its highest possible level of alert since a string of terror attacks that began in 2015, which have killed more than 230 people.
The vote is being closely watched as a pivotal event amid a global swing to the right, including Mr Trump’s election in November and Britain’s decision to exit the European Union last summer, a move the US president has applauded.
Barack Obama spoke to presidential runner Emmanuel Macron about the “important upcoming election in France,” a spokesman for the former US president said.