Suspect in attack on soldiers shot
FRANCE: French police shot and arrested a man suspected of mowing down six soldiers in Paris yesterday after pursuing him down a motorway.
Le Parisien newspaper named the driver in the suspected terror incident as Hamou B, a 37-year-old from Sartrouville in the northwestern suburbs of Paris. He is in hospital with serious injuries.
At least 300 police were mobilised in the manhunt, after what police said was a ‘‘complex and dangerous intervention’’.
One police officer is understood to have been hit by a stray bullet. The arrest, made on the A16 motorway in the northern town of Marquise, came after a driver of a BMW mowed down six French soldiers in Levallois-Perret, an upmarket suburb to the northwest of Paris.
‘‘A suspect has been detained and police are carrying out a raid at his home,’’ a police spokesman said.
Prime Minister Edouard Philippe confirmed the suspect was driving the same car that had hit the soldiers, but stopped short of saying whether the arrested man is believed to have been behind the attack. The man was reported to be unarmed when arrested.
Gerard Collomb, the interior minister, said the attack had been carried out by ‘‘a man on his own’’, adding that it was deliberate.
He confirmed that the threat in France ‘‘remains extremely elevated’’. ‘‘This is the eighth attack against our security forces since January 2015,’’ he said.
Collomb visited the injured soldiers in hospital.
The incident occurred at about 8am local time after a BMW rammed a group of soldiers who were stepping out of the barracks.
Witnesses said the car was parked, apparently in wait, on a small road not far from the town hall.
‘‘I heard a huge crash, which I thought was the sound of scaffolding being put up,’’ Thierry Chappe, a resident in a building opposite the crime scene, said.
Six soldiers were taken to a military hospital to the southwest of Paris after the hit-and-run.
Three of them are said to have sustained serious but not lifethreatening injuries.
The other three have been released from hospital with minor injuries.
The soldiers, from the 35th infantry regiment, were taken by surprise in the attack and reportedly unable to give clear details about exactly what happened. They were in the middle of a changing of the guards at the time.
Patrick Balkany, the local mayor, immediately told the French press that the incident was ‘‘without a doubt a deliberate act’’.
He said the driver had been waiting for the soldiers to report for duty, then ‘‘accelerated very quickly the moment they came out’’.