'We stand with them'
Macron in terror-struck Strasbourg
French President Emmanuel Macron visited Strasbourg on Friday — a day after cops fatally shot a terrorist who killed four people at the city’s Christmas market — while investigators probe whether the jihadist had any accomplices.
Macron placed a white rose on the Kleber monument, a makeshift memorial in the center of the city with thousands of candles, flowers and messages, as soldiers sang the Marseillaise national anthem, Agence France-Presse reported.
“The whole nation stands with the people of Strasbourg. This is what I wanted to tell them tonight,” said Macron.
The eastern French city near the German border slowly re- turned to normal on Friday, with its famous Christmas market reopening three days after Cherif Chekatt, 29, a small-time criminal who was radicalized in prison, went on a shooting spree.
He shot dead a Thai tourist on vacation in Strasbourg with his wife, an Afghan, an Italian journalist in town to cover the European parliament and a local Frenchman who had just retired.
Twelve people were also wounded in Chekatt’s attack, including one who has been declared brain-dead.
ISIS said in a Twitter post that Chekatt was one of its “soldiers,” a claim France’s Interior Minister Christophe Castaner dismissed as “completely opportunistic.”
France’s anti-terror prosecutor Remy Heitz said the investigation was now focusing on whether anyone “helped or encouraged Chekatt preparing or carrying out” the attack — or helped him while he was on the run.
Seven people were in police custody on Friday, including Chekatt’s parents and two brothers, Heitz said.
Another brother, who like Chekatt was on France’s antiterror watchlist for suspected extremists, has been detained in Algeria, sources close to the inquiry told AFP.
Officials praised the massive public help and quick police reaction that led to the death in Strasbourg of Chekatt, a career criminal with 27 convictions in four countries who was flagged by French security forces in 2015 as a possible Islamic extremist.