PARIS — A gunman who officials suspect may have been motivated by Islamophobic hatred opened fire from a car west of Paris on Friday, killing one person and wounding five others, three of them seriously.
“The investigations are ongoing, but it is clearly a terrorist crime. It is an extremely serious act,” Interior Minister Laurent Nunez told reporters from the Yvelines district west of Paris where the attack took place.
Officials said the 39-year-old suspect, who has not been named, drove through the town of Trappes, where he fired an automatic weapon at a petrol station, a medical centre and a children’s playground.
The rampage lasted almost 15 minutes, said Nuñez. A12-year-old girl is among the wounded.
Broadcaster BFM said the wounded girl had been hit eight times and was in a serious condition.
The motive remains unclear, but the National Anti-Terrorist Prosecutor’s Office (PNAT) said the incident appeared to be “murder in connection with a terrorist enterprise”.
The Mayor of Trappes, Ali Rabeh, said that “an individual fired shots from his vehicle at several people he encountered” on Friday morning.
“(It was) objectively a racist attack, probably Islamophobic,” said Rabeh, whose parents came from Morocco. “The people targeted today could just as easily have been my mother, my brothers or my sisters-in-law.”
The suspected attacker has been arrested. Video images showed his car riddled with bullets.
The gunman drove through several neighborhoods in a grey Renault Clio, according to witnesses. Rabeh said he had “fired randomly” with the seeming intent of causing “as many casualties as possible… he wanted to cause carnage”, he said.
A police union official said the suspect had been detained in La Verrière on the main N10 road that runs through the town.
Asked what the motive for the shootings may have been, Rabeh said that the victim who had died was of African origin and one of those in a critical condition was of North African descent.
The attack had a “racist, probably Islamophobic overtone”, he said.
In its own statement, the anti-terror prosecutor called for caution regarding the identity of the victims.
However, among the alleged offences covered by the investigation, the prosecutor listed “murder in connection with a terrorist enterprise” with the aggravated circumstance of acts committed because of “real or perceived membership of a particular race, ethnicity, nation or religion”.
A local police chief told BFMTV that the suspect had used “an older-style semi-automatic weapon” with bursts of fire. Le Parisien reported that the gun dated back to World War Two.
PNAT said their investigation also includes “possession of a Category A weapon” — which includes military-grade weapons or weapons capable of firing in bursts.
The anti-terrorist office also said its investigation is looking into “conspiracy with a terrorist group for the purpose of preparing crimes against persons”.
Source: Saudi Gazette