A gunman has killed one person and wounded five others, including a 12-year-old girl, in a possible Islamophobic “terrorist crime” in the Paris suburbs, authorities said.
An unidentified 39-year-old male suspect was taken into custody shortly after the attacks in the towns of Trappes and nearby La Verriere outside the capital on Friday.
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Interior Minister Laurent Nunez said the suspect fired at a children’s playground, a fuel station and a medical centre, the Reuters news agency reported. Three of the victims, including the 12-year-old girl, suffered life-threatening injuries, he said.
Nunez said the attack lasted less than 15 minutes and that the gunman appeared to have used “a military-grade weapon, or at least an automatic weapon”. Prosecutors were treating it as a “terrorist crime” and investigating whether it was racially or religiously motivated, he said.
The Elysee presidential palace described the shooting as a “racist, terrorist attack” as French President Emanuel Macron visited Trappes, a working-class town about 20km (13 miles) west of Paris, after the shooting on Friday.
Trappes Mayor Ali Rabeh said the gunman “appeared to be firing at random and seemed intent on carrying out a massacre”.
“This was a terrorist attack with racist, likely Islamophobic, overtones,” he said.
Rabeh said the person killed was “of African origin” and that one of the wounded, who was in critical condition, was “of North African origin”.
La Verriere Mayor Nicolas Dainville said the girl, who was shot eight times, was seriously wounded but in stable condition.
“I’m North African and it’s frightening for everyone who has the same background,” Adel, a 50-year-old resident of Trappes, told the AFP news agency, saying his “heart was broken” at learning the victims might have been targeted for their race.
Two of the wounded in his town, cleaners working at a school on Friday morning when the gunman got out of his car to open fire, were of African origin, he said.
Macron said national antiterrorism prosecutors had taken over the case, opening an investigation for “murder in connection with a terrorist enterprise” and examining whether the attack targeted the “real or supposed race, ethnicity, nationality or religion” of the victims.
They said the suspect had also booby-trapped his flat with three gas canisters and electric wires “connected to a timer”.
“Our thoughts go out to the victims, their families, and all the residents of Yvelines. In this terrible ordeal, the Nation stands by their side,” Macron posted on X.
Prime Minister Sebastien Lecornu said in a post on X that the case was “very serious” and that “all resources of the security forces and the judiciary are fully mobilised”.
Tensions ahead of Saturday protests
Separately, security was tightened ahead of planned nationwide protests this weekend. Many of the demonstrations have been banned following burning and looting at protests last weekend.
Nunez said France would deploy 70,000 officers across the country on Saturday, along with helicopters, armoured vehicles and water cannon. In addition, elite police units will help secure public buildings, such as city halls, in a “highly mobile” security operation, he said.
Protests last week caused chaos, with people setting fires, storming public buildings, smashing shop windows, looting and clashing with police, in France’s most violent unrest in years.
France has been on edge since the riots, and overnight curfews were put in place in cities across the country for a week.
Far-right politicians say the government has not cracked down hard enough on protesters, while left-wing groups say the security around demonstrations violates rights.
Demonstrators plan to take to the streets again on Saturday to denounce the high cost of living. Students, members of the Confederation of Labour, a national trade union and activists from the “yellow vest” movement, whose demonstrations against social injustice shook France in 2018 and 2019, are all set to join.
