French officer who traded places with hostage dies

TREBES ( France): A French police officer who offered himself up to an extremist gunman in exchange for a hostage died of his injuries, raising the death toll in the attack to four, and the officer was honoured as a national hero of “exceptional courage and selflessness”.

Col Arnaud Beltrame (pic) was among the first officers to respond to the attack on the supermarket in the south of France on Friday.

When Beltrame went inside the supermarket, he had given up his own weapon and volunteered himself in exchange for a female hostage.

Unbeknownst to the Moroccoborn captor, he left his cellphone on so police outside could hear what was happening in the store.

They stormed the building when they heard gunshots, officials said. Beltrame was fatally wounded.

His death raises the toll to four. The gunman was also killed, and 15 people were injured in the attack.

“Arnaud Beltrame died in the service of the nation to which he had already given so much,” President Emmanuel Macron said in a statement yesterday.

“In giving his life to end the deadly plan of a terrorist, he fell as a hero.”

Macron has said investigators will focus on establishing how the gunman, identified by prosecutors as Morocco-born Redouane Lakdim, got his weapon and how he became radicalised.