Cops swoop after shooting in Paris

Three other people — including two police officers — were wounded before the gunman was shot dead.

The Islamic State extremist group quickly claimed responsibility for last night’s attack, just three days before the presidential election.

Security has already has been a dominant theme in the campaign and the violence on the city’s iconic avenue threatened to have a bearing on voters’ decisions.

Early today, investigators searched a house in an eastern suburb of Paris believed to be linked to the shooting.

A police document identified the address searched in the town of Chelles as the family home of 39-year-old Karim Cheurfi (pictured), who has a criminal record.

Authorities are trying to determine whether “one or more people” might have helped the attacker, interior ministry spokesman Pierre-Henry Brandet said at the scene of the shooting.

One police officer was killed and two colleagues seriously wounded when the attacker emerged from a car and used an automatic weapon to shoot at officers outside a Marks & Spencer store at the centre of the ChampsElysees, anti-terrorism prosecutor Francois Molins said.

The gunman was shot dead by other officers.

POLICE swooped on a house in a Paris suburb after a gunman shot and killed an officer on the Champs-Elysees boulevard.

A female foreign tourist also was wounded, Mr Molins said.

The IS group’s claim of responsibility just a few hours after the attack came unusually swiftly for the extremist group, which has been losing territory in Iraq and Syria.

In a statement from its Amaq news agency, the group gave a pseudonym for the gunman, Abu Yusuf al-Beljiki, indicating he was Belgian or had lived in Belgium.

Belgian authorities said they had no information about the suspect.

IS described the shootings as an attack “in the heart of Paris”.

The attacker had been flagged as an extremist, according to two police sources.

Mr Brandet said officers were “deliberately” targeted, as has happened repeatedly to French security forces in recent years.

Forensic experts investigate the crime scene after the Champs-Elysees shooting in which a police officer was killed.