Weekend Argus (Saturday Edition)
3 die in attack on French supermarket
Gunman ‘linked to Islamic State’
TREBES: Three people were killed in south-western France yesterday when a gunman held up a car, opened fire on police officers and then took hostages in a supermarket, screaming: “Allahu akbar.”
Police later stormed the supermarket in the small town of Trebes. Interior Minister Gerard Collomb said on Twitter the attacker had been killed.
Local media reported the hostage-taker had claimed allegiance to Islamic State and had demanded the release of Salah Abdeslam, the prime surviving suspect in the Isis attacks that killed 130 people in Paris in 2015.
A 45-year-old lieutenant-colonel apparently gave himself in exchange for one of the hostages in the shop.
A source at the Interior Ministry confirmed two had died at the hostage-taking.
“It is a provisional assessment as it could, unfortunately, get worse.
“Three people are wounded, including one of them seriously,” the source said.
Later, a police union official said the attacker had also killed one person with a bullet in the head in the nearby town of Carcassonne before the hostage-taking.
French president Emmanuel Macron said the incident appeared to be a terrorist attack and security forces were securing the area.
The Paris prosecutor’s office said counter-terrorism prosecutors were investigating the incident but did not comment on the attacker’s possible Isis allegiance.
Eric Menassi, mayor of Trebes, said the hostage-taker ended up alone with one police officer in the supermarket and all the other hostages were freed. The man had entered the shop screaming: “Allahu akbar, (God is greatest). I’ll kill you all.”
Since 2015, more than 240 people have been killed in France in attacks by assailants who pledged allegiance to, or were inspired by, Isis.
Menassi said first the gunman held up a car, killing one person and wounding another. Then he fired on police officers in Carcassone, wounding one in the shoulder, before heading to the Super-U supermarket in Trebes.
A woman who had been shopping at the supermarket described how people had taken refuge in a cold room.
“A man shouted and fired several times. I saw a cold room door; I asked people to come and take shelter,” she said. “We were 10 and we stayed an hour. There were more gunshots and we went out the back door.”
French investigators reportedly believed the hostage-taker was known to the intelligence services and had been flagged in a database of radicalised Islamist militants.
Earlier, the Interior Ministry had said security forces were carrying out an operation at a supermarket in southern France. Collomb was on his way there
The UNSA police union also said on Twitter a police operation was under way after an individual had earlier shot at four officers in the Carcassone region, wounding one of them. – Reuters/African News Agency (ANA)