Search continues for gunman in Christmas market attack
STRASBOURG, FRANCE » Hundreds of security forces combed eastern France for a 29-year-old man with a long criminal record who shouted “God is great!” in Arabic and sprayed gunfire during a deadly rampage in Strasbourg’s famous Christmas market, officials said.
Tuesday night’s attack at the Christmas market in Strasbourg killed two people, left a third braindead and injured 12, and was a stark reminder to a nation wounded by previous assaults that terrorism remains a threat, even as anti-government protests roil the country.
National police distributed a photo of the wounded fugitive, identified as Cherif Chekatt, with the warning: “Individual dangerous, above all do not intervene.”
France raised its threestage threat index to the highest level and bolstered troops around France.
Interior Minister Christophe Castaner told lawmakers
that the French native, born in Strasbourg, had run-ins with police starting at age 10 and his first conviction at age 13.
Chekatt had been convicted 27 times, mostly in France but also in Switzerland and Germany, for crimes including armed robbery. He had been flagged for extremism and was on a watch list, but the interior minister said “the signs were weak.”
The emerging profile seemed to point to an increasingly common hybrid extremist who moves from acts of delinquency to sowing terror.
“It’s a large zone and the search is difficult,” senior Interior Ministry official Laurent Nunez said on France-Inter radio. Strasbourg is on the border with Germany, where the suspect was convicted in 2016 of breaking into a dental practice and a pharmacy in two towns.
His parents and two brothers, also known for radicalism, were detained, a judicial official said.
Prosecutor Remy Heitz said the man attacked with a handgun and a knife about 8 p.m. Tuesday, and was shot in the arm during an exchange of fire with soldiers during his rampage. He then took a taxi to another part of the city, boasting of the attack to the driver, and later exchanged more gunfire with police and disappeared, Heitz said.
Witnesses described shots and screams after the gunman opened fire and yelled “God is great!” in Arabic, the prosecutor said. Swaths of the city were under lockdown for hours.