Paris suicide attacker dies in failed raid

FRANCE: Paris prosecutors have launched a terror inquiry after a car carrying weapons ‘‘deliberately’’ rammed a police van on the Champs-Elysees yesterday, just 200 metres from the presidential palace.

The car struck the police van in the central Parisian district at around 3.40pm local time and burst into flames. Orange smoke billowed from the vehicle as police moved in to neutralise the driver in an apparent botched suicide attack.

Inside the burning car, they found a Kalashnikov rifle, handguns, gun cartridges and one gas canister, a police source said.

The driver – reportedly a 31-year-old known to intelligence and on a security watch list – died in the ‘‘attempted attack’’, according to French Interior Minister Gerard Collomb.

‘‘Security forces have been targeted in France once again,’’ he added.

The weapons and explosives found in the vehicle ‘‘could potentially blow this car up’’.

Nobody else was hurt and the dead driver’s motives are unknown. Anti-terror police have launched an inquiry. Experts said the curious yellow smoke coming from the car suggested it contained explosive material that failed to properly blow up on contact.

Jacques Poinas, the former head of the French anti-terror coordination unit, said: ‘‘It appears the explosive part didn’t work. The device was apparently ignited but didn’t go off. It could also be that the assailant was too badly injured in the collision to go through with his plan.’’

Collomb said the incident showed the terror threat remained very high.

He is due to present a bill at a cabinet meeting today to extend France’s state of emergency from July 15 until November 1.

A new security law ‘‘is needed’’ and the measure would ‘‘maintain a high security level’’ beyond the end of the state of emergency, he said.

France has been under a state of emergency since the November 2015 attacks by Islamic extremists in Paris. – Telegraph Group