Gunman shot dead by French police after he beheads man
FRENCH police yesterday shot dead a suspected terrorist who decapitated a teacher in public and posted a video of the severed head online.
The victim was last night identified as history tutor Samuel P, who had apparently shown cartoons of the prophet Mohammed in a freedom of expression class, said a source.
The gunman who butchered him near a school outside Paris was described as a Moscow- born 18- yearold who had links to the college.
He fled when officers arrived at the bloodbath in Conflans- SainteHonorine, 25 miles from the centre of the French capital.
“The body of a decapitated man was found at around 5.30 in the afternoon,” the investigating source said.
Witnesses saw the attacker decapitating his victim and as police arrived, he threatened them with weapons. The killer, thought to be wearing an explosives vest, ran to nearby Eragnysur- Oise but refused to surrender.
“He was waving a gun by this time and further threatened officers,” added the source. “This is when he was shot dead by police. Around ten shots were heard.”
The gunman “is believed to be from a Chechen background”, said the source, referring to the Russian republic which fought two wars with Moscow in the early 2000s.
Thousands of refugees, including many devout Muslims, later fled to French cites.
Anti- terrorist officials are investigating the attack, which follows several terrorist outrages across France. Interior minister Gerald Darmanin went to the scenes last night.
There have been a series of bomb, gun and knife outrages by Islamic State and al- Qaeda fanatics in France since early 2015. Its most deadly terror attack was in November 2015, when 130 people were killed in Paris as terrorists targeted the Stade de France, cafes, restaurants and the Bataclan music venue, where 90 died.
Also that year, two Paris- born gunmen burst into the offices of the Charlie Hebdo satirical magazine, killing 20 people in their rampage.
In July 2016, 86 people were killed and more than 400 injured when a 19- tonne truck was driven into seafront crowds in Nice by a Tunisian immigrant. He was shot dead by police. That month, two Isis terrorists murdered an 86- year- old Catholic priest at a Normandy church service.
There have been frequent knife attacks on the forces of law and order, leading to the deaths of police.
In October last year, a 45- year- old radicalised computer operator at the Paris Prefecture in the centre of the capital stabbed four of his colleagues to death with a kitchen knife.