BLOOD ON THE ÉLYSÉES
Terrorist kills cop in shaken Paris
France was hit with yet another deadly terrorist attack on Thursday, this time on Paris’ busiest street, the Champs-Élysées, where a gunman opened fire on a police van, killing one officer and seriously injuring two other cops and a bystander.
ISIS claimed responsibility for the shooting, naming the gunman as “Islamic State fighter” Abu Yousef al-Belgiki.
Police quickly put a stop to the attack — killing the gunman at the scene — but it was another jarring assault in a nation still shaken by the massacre of 130 people around Paris in 2015, the Charlie Hebdo magazine slaughter earlier that year and the deadly Nice truck rampage in 2016.
The latest attack comes just days before the country’s presidential election.
Outgoing President François Hollande said, “I am deeply sad tonight. I would like to express my heartfelt condolences for the policeman gunned down and his family.”
The officers involved in Thursday’s attack were stopped at a red light on the bustling boulevard — popular with tourists and famed for its luxury shop and eateries — at around 9 p.m. local time when the gunman drove up, pulled out an automatic weapon and opened fire.
Witnesses described a scene of panic as gunshots rang out and people ran for cover.
Choukri Chouanine said he was serving clients in his restaurant on the Rue de Ponthieu when he heard the shots.
“We hid our clients in the basement,” he told Agence France-Presse. “We hid in the offices, under tables.”
Badi Ftaiti, who has lived in Paris for three decades, said he wasn’t alarmed, but others were “running, running . . . Some were crying. There were tens, maybe even hundreds of them.”
Investigators early Friday searched a home in a Paris suburb that they believe is linked to the attack.
Just days earlier, French police foiled an “imminent” terrorist attack in the city of Marseille, arresting two men and seizing guns and explosives from their apartments.
An Islamic extremist was shot dead at Paris’ Orly Airport last month, and in February, a man rushed at a group of soldiers outside the Louvre.
The barrage of jihadist assaults has the country reeling.
“It’s the major question,” Louis Bernard, founder of a Paris crisis-management firm, told the France 24 news channel. “Is it because we’ve joined forces and joined a coalition in Iraq and Syria against Islamic State?”