Police step up Strasbourg manhunt
Suspect identified by police is known to intelligence services
Police were yesterday continuing their manhunt in eastern France for the gunman who shot and killed three people in an attack on a Christmas market in Strasbourg on Tuesday.
Police identified the gunman as Cherif Chekatt, 29, a native of Strasbourg who had been known to security services as a security risk, having been radicalised in prison.
With the suspect on the run, France raised its security threat to the highest level possible, tightening its border with Germany on which Strasbourg is placed.
Agents checked vehicles crossing the Rhine on the French-German frontier and the government sent extra security personnel to the French city to help with the search. German agents checked trains and pedestrians arriving in the country.
Paris public prosecutor Remy Heitz said witnesses saw him launch the attack on the Christmas market, killing the three people and wounding at least 12.
The gunman was believed to be injured before his escape, said the driver of the taxi he used to make his getaway.
“Considering the target, his way of operating, his profile and the testimonies of those who heard him yell ‘Allahu Akbar’, the anti-terrorist police have been called into action,” Mr Heitz said yesterday.
No group has claimed responsibility for the attack but ISIS supporters celebrated it on social media.
A spokeswoman for Germany’s BKA criminal police said Chekatt was deported to France last year and was known to French authorities as an extremist.
He had spent time in prison in France and Germany, including several serious cases of robbery.
Chekatt broke into a dentist practice in Mainz, Rhineland Palatinate state, in 2012, making away with cash, stamps and gold used for fillings, German newspaper Tagesspiegel reported.
Four years later, he hit a pharmacy in the Lake Constance town of Engen, Baden-Wuerttemberg, pocketing cash.
He was on a French watch list, but there are about 26,000 people on the S-File register.
French authorities on Tuesday raided Chekatt’s home, a small apartment in a rundown housing block, and detained five people for interrogation.
Authorities urged people in the area to stay inside after the attack, but Strasbourg Mayor Roland Ries told BFM television yesterday that “life must go on” so that the city did not give in to a “terrorist who is trying to disrupt our way of life”.
The assailant got inside a security zone around the venue and opened fire from there before escaping, Mr Ries said.
“We cannot predict how long these measures will stay in place,” a spokeswoman for the German border police said.
“We don’t know where the attacker is and we want to prevent him from entering Germany.”
Extremist attacks rocked France in 2015 and 2016, with the deadliest being the co-ordinated Paris suicide bomb and shooting attacks on a concert hall, football stadium and restaurants.
Other attacks included a lorry-ramming on a promenade in the southern city of Nice, a shooting on the Champs-Elysees boulevard and the beheading of a priest near the northern town of Rouen.
A German Christmas market was also the target of an attack in December 2016, when Tunisian-born Anis Amri rammed a lorry into a Christmas market in Berlin, killing two people and wounding 56.
The attack occurred days after protests rocked Paris and other cities around the country over living costs in what has become the deepest crisis of Emmanuel Macron’s presidency.
But there was no need for the government to declare a state of emergency because new legislation gave police adequate powers to handle the situation, French Justice Minister Nicole Belloubet said.
Considering the target, his way of operating and his profile, the anti-terrorist police have been called into action REMY HEITZ Paris public prosecutor