1 policeman killed, 3 people injured by gunman
PARIS — A gunman opened fire on police on Paris’ iconic Champs-Elysees boulevard Thursday night, killing one officer and wounding three people before police shot and killed him. The Islamic State group quickly claimed responsibility for the attack.
Near midnight, President François Hollande said in an address to the nation that the attack appeared to be an act of terrorism, and he held an emergency meeting with the prime minister and planned to convene the defense council this morning. The Paris prosecutor opened a terrorism investigation.
French presidential candidates canceled or rescheduled last-minute campaign events ahead of Sunday’s first-round vote in the tense election. Security already was a dominant theme in the race, and the violence on the sparkling boulevard threatened to weigh on voters’ decisions.
Investigators were conducting searches early today in at least one eastern suburb of Paris, according to three police officials. Authorities were trying to determine whether the assailant had accomplices, anti-terrorism prosecutor Francois Molins told reporters.
The attacker emerged from a car and used an automatic weapon to shoot at officers outside a Marks & Spencer’s store at the center of the Champs-Elysees, Molins said. Two police officers and a woman tourist were wounded, he said. The gunfire sent scores of tourists fleeing into side streets.
Two police officials said the chief suspect is 39-yearold Karim Cheurfi, from the eastern Paris suburb of Chelles, where the search was being conducted.
Police tape surrounded the quiet, middle-class neighborhood early today, with police and soldiers sealing off the area, ordering tourists back into hotels and blocking people from approaching the scene.
Archive reports by the French newspaper Le Parisien indicated that Cheurfi was convicted of attacking a police officer in 2001, and the attacker had been flagged as an extremist, according to two police officials, speaking on condition of anonymity.
Interior Ministry spokesman Pierre-Henry Brandet said officers were “deliberately” targeted in the attack.
The Islamic State group, in a statement from its Amaq news agency, gave a pseudonym for the shooter, Abu Yusuf al-Beljiki, indicating he was Belgian or had lived in Belgium.
Islamic State groupinspired attacks have killed at least 235 people in France since January 2015, by far the largest casualty figure of any Western country. France remains under a state of emergency. Security has been especially high since Tuesday, when police said they thwarted a terror attack by arresting two men.
On Thursday night, emergency vehicles blocked the wide Champs-Elysees, an avenue lined with shops and normally packed with cars and tourists that cuts across central Paris between the Arc de Triomphe and the Tuileries Gardens. Subway stations were closed off.
The attack came only days before the start of a presidential vote that could reverberate across Europe, and as the 11 candidates were having their final quasi-debate on the France 2 television network. The debate was briefly interrupted so the network could report on the shootings.
Analysts have been saying that an attack just before the first vote, or between the first vote and the runoff on May 7, could tip the election toward a candidate perceived as tougher on crime and terrorism, especially farright leader Marine Le Pen, who has hardened her stand against Muslim immigration, or François Fillon, who has pledged to eradicate Islamic terrorism.