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Champs Élysées: Car Carrying Guns, Gas Rams Police Van, Driver Dead

Champs Élysées: Car Carrying Guns, Gas Rams Police Van, Driver Dead
folder_openFrance access_time6 years ago
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Handguns, assault rifle and gas canister were found in a car used in ‘attempted attack' on Champs Élysées Avenue in Paris, French officials said.

Champs Élysées: Car Carrying Guns, Gas Rams Police Van, Driver Dead

France's anti-terror prosecutor opened an investigation after the car carrying firearms and a gas canister rammed into a police van on the Champs Élysées in central Paris.

The French interior minister, Gérard Collomb, said the driver of the car was killed in what he described as "an attempted attack" on a convoy of police vehicles on the avenue, the scene of two terror attacks in three months.

Police sources told French media the attacker was a 31-year-old French national from the Paris suburb of Argenteuil whose name was on a terror watch list because of his known links with suspected extremists.

Collomb said arms and a gas canister were found in the car. Police sources said the weapons included handguns and an AK47 assault rifle. Bomb disposal experts were at the scene.

Collomb told reporters the attempted attack on security forces showed the terror threat was "still very high in our country" and justified extending to November the state of emergency France has been under since late 2015.

No other injuries, including to the police officers inside the van, were reported in the ramming, which a police source told BFM TV resembled a "kamikaze attack".

Police cleared the area and cordoned off the Champs Élysées, also closing a nearby metro station. The area, popular with tourists, has been on high security alert since a police officer was shot and killed there in April.

Days before the first round of France's presidential election, Karim Cheurfi, a convicted criminal who carried a note defending Daesh [the Arabic acronym of the terrorist ‘ISIS/ISIL' group], used a Kalashnikov rifle to kill the police officer before being shot dead himself.

France has been on its highest level of terror alert since the 2015 Charlie Hebdo and Paris attacks and the Nice truck attack of July 2016 that claimed nearly 230 lives.

Meanwhile, thousands of troops and armed police have been deployed to guard tourist hotspots.

Source: News Agencies, Edited by website team

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