Strasbourg Shooting: Three Killed, Suspect on the Run

Local Editor

France upgraded its security threat level as hundreds of police hunted a gunman who shot three people dead and injured 12 others in a terror attack on Strasbourg’s celebrated Christmas market on Tuesday evening.

Six hours after the gunman disappeared after firing at passers-by in the busy city center, interior minister Christophe Castaner said the government had raised the risk level to the highest category.

The move would strengthen border controls and bolster protection of Christmas markets and other events.

In a statement, Castaner said the gunman opened fire in three different places in the city before engaging in firefights with patrolling soldiers.

“He fought twice with our security forces,” Castaner said.

French media reported the man, who was injured in one of the exchanges, then jumped in a taxi and disappeared.

The French police immediately cut off major roads in and out of the city and launched a massive operation involving 350 police gendarmes and soldiers, as well as helicopters, to find him.

Meanwhile, security services said they identified the gunman as a 29-year-old born in Strasbourg, known to police and also on the “Fiche S” list of potential security threats.

French media reported that gendarmes attempted to arrest the man for a separate crime at his home in the Neudorf district of southeast Strasbourg earlier on Tuesday. The suspect was not home, but officers reportedly found “grenades” in his apartment.

Shortly before 8pm local time, the man, armed with an automatic rifle, walked over one of Strasbourg’s many bridges around the Grand Île toward the Christmas market, which attracts millions of visitors every year. Witnesses said the man fired a first volley of rounds and then walked down the street before opening fire again.

One of the dead was said to be a Thai tourist who was shot in the head outside a restaurant. Staff and diners tried to save him but were unsuccessful.

Six of the injured were reported to be in a critical condition.

The anti-terrorist section of the Paris prosecutor’s office declared the incident to be an act of terrorism and announced an inquiry had been opened into “murder and attempted murder in relation to a criminal enterprise”.

The French president, Emmanuel Macron, immediately held a crisis meeting at the interior ministry in Paris.

The gunman reportedly shot at soldiers patrolling as part of the nationwide Operation Sentinelle, the French military operation introduced in the aftermath of terrorist attacks in and around Paris in January 2015, and was injured when they fired back.

Source: News Agencies, Edited by website team