The man authorities believe killed three people during a rampage near a Christmas market in Strasbourg was shot dead in a shootout with police at the end of a two-day manhunt on Thursday, 13 December, French authorities said, reported Associated Press.
The Paris prosecutor's office, which handles terror cases in France, formally identified the man killed in the eastern French city as 29-year-old Cherif Chekatt, a Strasbourg-born man with a long history of convictions for various crimes, including robberies. Chekatt also had been on a watch list of potential extremists.
Senior Interior Ministry official Laurent Nunez said the suspected assailant had been radicalised in prison, and had been monitored by French intelligence services since his release from jail in late 2015, because of his suspected religious extremism.
Nunez, secretary of state for the Interior Ministry, said on France-Inter radio that police sought to arrest the man on Tuesday morning, hours before the shooting, in relation to an attempted murder. He was not at home but five other people were detained, authorities said.
Authorities did not give a motive for the shooting, though prosecutors said they had opened a terrorism investigation. Strasbourg, on France's eastern border, is home to the European Parliament, one of several places that was locked down after the shooting.
Suspect Served Jail Time Before
Interior Minister Christophe Castaner, who traveled to Strasbourg, said the suspect had been convicted in both France and Germany for breaking into a dental practice and a pharmacy in two German towns.
Hours before the shooting, French gendarmes went to the suspect's home to arrest him, but he wasn't there, Stephane Morisse of police union FGP said. They found explosive materials during a search, he said.
France, where most of Europe's worst terror attacks of recent years took place, was raising its terror alert level and sending security reinforcements to Strasbourg, Castaner said early on Wednesday, 12 December.
The attack came two years after a Tunisian man drove a hijacked truck into a busy Berlin Christmas market, killing 12 people.
Strasbourg, which promotes itself as the “Capital of Christmas,” is on the border with Germany, about 500 kilometres (310 miles) east of Paris. The market, France’s largest, is set up around the city’s cathedral during the Christmas season.
Extensive Search Operations
Some 350 security forces and two helicopters were searching for the assailant, who had been radicalised for "several years" and confronted law enforcement officers twice, exchanging fire, while he "sowed terror," Castaner said.
The shooter was also shot and wounded by soldiers guarding the Christmas market, according to Stephane Morisse of police union FGP.
‘I Heard Screams,’ Says Witness
French military spokesperson Col Patrik Steiger said the shooter didn't seem to be aiming at soldiers patrolling in and around the market, but appeared to target civilians instead.
Witnesses described hearing gunshots, screams and shouts of police officers ordering people to stay indoors before the area fell silent and the officers fanned out.
"I heard two or three shots at around 7:55 pm (1855 GMT), then I heard screams. I got close to the window. I saw people running. After that I closed the shutters. Then I heard more shots, closer this time," Yoann Bazard, 27, who lives in central Strasbourg.
“I thought maybe it’s firecrackers,” he said, speaking by phone. “And then, as it got close, it was really shocking. There were a lot of screams... There were police or soldiers shouting ‘Get inside!’ and ‘Put your hands on your head.’”
Freelance journalist Camille Belsoeur was at a friend's apartment when they heard the gunfire, which she at first mistook for firecrackers.
"We opened the window. I saw a soldier firing shots, about 12 to 15 shots," Belsoeur said. Other soldiers yelled for people to stay indoors and shouted 'Go home! Go home!'" to those outside, he said.
Another witness, Peter Fritz, told the BBC one of the four people killed was a Thai tourist who was shot in the head and didn't respond to lengthy attempts to revive him.
"We tried our best to resuscitate him. We applied CPR. We dragged him into a restaurant close by," Fritz said.
He said it took more than 45 minutes for an ambulance to arrive, during which time an emergency doctor advised by telephone “that any further efforts would be futile.”
The victim "is still here in this restaurant but we have abandoned all hope for him," Fritz said.
France has been hit in recent years with high-profile extremist attacks, including the coordinated attacks at multiple Paris locations that killed 130 people and wounded hundreds in November 2015. A 2016 truck attack in Nice killed dozens.
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