The Courier & Advertiser (Perth and Perthshire Edition)
Man arrested after soldiers ambushed in car attack outside military barracks
Officers open fire during arrest to subdue man suspected of injuring soldiers
A man has been arrested after a car was rammed into a group of soldiers near Paris, injuring six of them.
It is unclear what motivated the driver, who was taken to hospital with bullet wounds after a calculated ambush and hours-long police chase.
Authorities said he deliberately accelerated his BMW into a cluster of soldiers in what prosecutors are investigating as a potential terrorist attack.
President Emmanuel Macron’s government painted the incident in the suburb of Levallois-Perret as proof of the need to approve a new security law that critics fear infringes on liberties and puts France in a permanent state of emergency.
While others have targeted prominent sites like the Eiffel Tower, yesterday morning’s attack hit the leafy, relatively affluent suburb of Levallois-Perret that is home to France’s main intelligence service, the DGSI, and its counterterrorism service.
“We know it was a deliberate act,” interior minister Gerard Collomb said.
Defence minister Florence Parly called it a reminder that extra security measures imposed in recent years are “more necessary than ever”.
The suspect was seen waiting in a black car in a cul-de-sac near the Levallois city hall and a building used as a staging point for soldiers in France’s Sentinelle operation to protect prominent sites, according to two police officials.
Soldiers emerged from the building to board vehicles for a new shift when the car sped up and rammed into them, its force hurling the soldiers against their van, according to one official.
Authorities checked video surveillance of the area and police fanned out and stopped numerous cars as they searched for the attacker. Most were released.
Then, on the A16 highway near the English Channel port of Calais, police stopped what the prime minister called the “principal suspect”.
Images of the arrest scene showed emergency vehicles surrounding a black BMW with a damaged windscreen, on a cordoned-off highway in the countryside.
Police officers opened fire during the arrest to subdue the man, and the suspect was injured along with an officer hit by a stray police bullet, according to a judicial official.
Heavily armed, masked police searched a building believed linked to the attacker in the Paris suburb of Bezons last night. His identity was not released.
The defence minister said she received “reassuring” news about the condition of the injured soldiers, and that their lives are not in danger.
The soldiers were from the 35th infantry regiment and served in Operation Sentinelle, created to guard prominent French sites after a string of deadly Islamic extremist attacks in 2015.
Counter-terrorism prosecutors have opened an investigation on potential charges of attempted murder of security forces in connection with a terrorist enterprise, the Paris prosecutor’s office said.