Gunman may have had help
FRANCE: French authorities are working to determine whether a gunman who opened fire on police in Paris was working alone, in an attack that killed one officer and wounded two others.
The gunman was shot and killed by police in the attack yesterday, just three days before the country’s presidential election, causing candidates to cancel or reschedule final campaign events ahead of the first-round vote.
Islamic State quickly claimed responsibility, and investigators searched a home in the city’s eastern suburbs believed to be linked to the attack.
A police document obtained by The Associated Press identified the address in the town of Chelles as the family home of Karim Cheurfi, a 39-year-old with a criminal record. Police tape surrounded the quiet, middle-class neighbourhood.
Archive reports by French newspaper Le Parisien said Cheurfi was convicted of attacking a police officer in 2001.
Authorities were trying to determine whether ‘‘one or more people’' might have helped the attacker, Interior Ministry spokesman Pierre-henry Brandet said at the scene of the shooting.
One officer was killed and two seriously wounded when the attacker emerged from a car and used an automatic weapon to shoot at the officers outside a Marks & Spencer’s department store at the centre of the Champs-elysees, antiterrorism prosecutor Francois Molins said. A female foreign tourist was also wounded.
Isis’s claim of responsibility just a few hours after the attack came unusually swiftly for the extremist group, which has been losing territory in Iraq and Syria.
In a statement from its Amaq news agency, the group used a pseudonym for the shooter, Abu Yusuf al-beljiki, indicating that he was Belgian or had lived in Belgium. Belgian authorities said they had no information about the suspect.
The attacker had been flagged as an extremist, according to two police officials who spoke on condition of anonymity.
Brandet said the officers were ‘‘deliberately’' targeted, as has happened repeatedly to French security forces in recent years, including in the runup to the 2012 election.
French President Francois Hollande said he was convinced that the circumstances of the attack pointed to a terrorist act. Hollande held an emergency meeting with the prime minister and planned to convene the defence council.
The incident recalled two recent attacks on soldiers providing security at prominent locations around Paris: one at the Louvre museum in February, and one at Orly airport last month.
- AAP, AP