French policeman who took place of hostage dies of gunshot wounds
PARIS: A gendarme who was shot three times after voluntarily taking the place of a hostage during a supermarket siege in southwestern France on Friday has died, France announced on Saturday.
Arnaud Beltrame, who once served in Iraq, had been raced to hospital fighting for his life after the siege in which he took the place of a female hostage at the Super U store in the town of Trebes, near the Pyrenees mountains.
“He fell as a hero, giving up his life to halt the murderous outfit of a terrorist,” President Emmanuel Macron said in a statement shortly before dawn on Saturday.
Friday’s attacker was identified by authorities as Redouane Lakdim, a 25-year-old Moroccan-born French national from the city of Carcassonne, not far from Trebes, a tranquil town of about 5,000 people where he struck on Friday afternoon.
Lakdim was known to authorities for drug-dealing and other petty crimes, but had also been under surveillance by security services in 2016-2017 for links to the extremist movement, Paris prosecutor Francois Molins said on Friday.
The attacker, whose rampage began when he shot at a group of police joggers and also shot the occupants of a car he stole, killed three people and injured 16 others on Friday, according to a government readout.
Beltrame was part of a team of gendarmes who were among the first to arrive at the supermarket scene; most of the people in the supermarket escaped after hiding in a cold storage room and then fleeing through an emergency exit.
He offered to trade places with a hostage the attacker was still holding, whereafter he took her place and left his mobile phone on a table, line open. When shots rang out, elite police stormed the building to kill the assailant. Police sources said Beltrame was shot three times.
The 44-year-old’s death takes the number killed to four. The IS group has claimed responsibility for the attack. Macron has said security services are checking that claim.
More than 240 people have been killed in France in attacks since 2015 by assailants who either pledged allegiance to IS or were inspired by the group.
France is part of a group of countries whose warplanes have been bombing IS strongholds in Iraq and Syria, where the group has lost substantial ground in recent months.
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