Strasbourg shooter’s family held
STRASBOURG: French President Emmanuel Macron visited here on Friday, a day after police shot dead a gunman who killed four people at the city’s Christmas market, as investigators probe whether the man had accomplices.
Macron placed a white rose on the Kleber monument, which has become a makeshift memorial in the centre of the city, with thousands of candles, flowers and messages, as soldiers sang the Marseillaise national anthem.
“The nation stands with the people of Strasbourg. This is what I want to tell them tonight,” said Macron, who earlier was in Brussels for a European Union summit.
Annette, 80, one of the hundreds attending the Strasbourg memorial, said she “came to pray for those who are no longer here”.
The eastern French city near the German border slowly began to return to normality on Friday, with its famous Christmas market reopening after 29-year-old Cherif Chekatt, a small-time criminal turned jihadist, went on a shooting spree on Tuesday.
Anti-terror prosecutor Remy Heitz said the probe was focusing on whether anyone “helped or encouraged Chekatt in preparing or carrying out” the attack, or helped him while he was on the run.
Seven people were in police custody on Friday, including Chekatt’s parents and two brothers, Heitz said.
Another brother, who like Chekatt was on France’s anti-terror watchlist for suspected extremists, had been detained in Algeria, sources said.