Three killed in terrorist rampage in France
‘Hero’ officer critical after being shot several times by hostage-taking gunman in siege at supermarket
A FRENCH policeman who swapped himself for a hostage in a supermarket siege was shot by an Islamist gunman who killed three people yesterday.
Arnaud Beltrame, a lieutenant-colonel in the gendarmerie, was among officers at the scene after a man stormed a supermarket in the south-west town of Trèbes, firing on shoppers and staff before taking a hostage.
He was hit by several bullets, including one to the throat which is lifethreatening, French media reported last night. Emmanuel Macron, the French president, said last night that Mr Beltrame was “fighting for his life” and hailed him a hero. The gunman was identified as Redouane Lakdim, 26, a petty criminal of Moroccan origin who had claimed allegiance to the Islamic State of Iraq and the Levant (Isil). He opened fire on passengers in a car, killing one of them, and later shot dead two more people at the supermarket. He eventually died in a police assault after a three-hour standoff.
Witnesses said he shouted “Allahu akbar” as he burst into the Super U store on the outskirts of the picturesque medieval town of around 5,000 inhabitants. French media reported that Lakdim had demanded the release of Salah Abdeslam, the surviving member of the 2015 Paris jihadist attacks that killed 130 people, adding he was taking revenge for the bombing of Isil targets in Syria by coalition forces.
The incident came as France remained on high alert after a string of terrorist attacks since January 2015. Lakdim embarked on his shooting spree in his home town, whose impressive medieval castle makes it a tourist hotspot, at 10am local time when he hijacked a car, shooting dead a passenger and seriously injuring its driver. He then fired at a group of police officers who were jogging near the castle and wounded one of them.
The attacker then drove off towards Trèbes, where he dumped the hijacked vehicle in a Super U car park before storming into the supermarket and shooting dead a shop worker and a customer. Other customers and staff fled or hid in the ensuing panic, with one group of people taking refuge in the supermarket’s cold store.
Christian Guibbert was one of them. He described how he heard gunshots when he arrived at the supermarket with his wife and sister-in-law, who hid in the cold room while he called the police on his mobile phone.
He said he saw the attacker holding a handgun and a knife, and was screaming “Allahu akbar” and ordering people to lie on the ground.
“At one point he saw me and took after me with his knife,” Guibbert told Reuters. “Then I looked back and he wasn’t there any more and I slipped out of an emergency exit.”
Police arrived shortly after the start of the siege, around 11am.
“They managed to get some of the people out,” said Mr Collomb, but the attacker kept one woman hostage, intending to use her as a human shield.
It was then that Mr Beltrame, a 45-year-old police lieutenant-colonel, offered to take the woman’s place and remained holed up with Lakdim while negotiations to end the standoff continued between the killer and police.
Mr Beltrame “left his telephone on the table”, switched on, to allow police surrounding the building to listen in, said Mr Collomb.
“When we heard shots, the GIGN (Groupe d’intervention de la Gendarmerie Nationale, an elite police force) intervened,” the minister said.
A team of about a dozen officers entered the building and quickly shot dead the attacker. According to a journalist from La Depeche, the local paper, one of the elite officers shouted “We got him, we got him,” as he re-emerged from the building.
Some time during the siege it appears Mr Beltrame was hit by a bullet. He remained in hospital in a critical condition last night.
Police later reported that an officer from the GIGN team was also injured during the operation to locate the gunman and immobilise him.
A Portuguese national was among those killed in the supermarket, the government in Lisbon confirmed.
Francois Molins, an anti-terror prosecutor, flew to the region yesterday and held a press conference in Carcassonne, where he said that Lakdim was born in Taza in northern Morocco and held French nationality.
Around 80,000 football fans attending the French national team’s match against Colombia, observed a minute of silence at the national stadium in Paris and Mayor Anne Hidalgo of Paris said the lights on the Eiffel Tower would be switched off at midnight to honour the people killed.
‘He was known by the police … we had monitored him and did not think he had been radicalised’