Macron condemns ‘racist terrorist attack’ after deadly shooting near Paris

TRAPPES, France: A gunman firing from a car killed one person and wounded five – including a 12-year-old girl shot eight times – in the Paris suburbs Friday (Oct 23), in what the French president branded a “racist terrorist attack”.

The man was “firing at random, wanting to cause a bloodbath” as he drove through the working-class town of Trappes southwest of Paris and neighbouring La Verriere, Trappes mayor Ali Rabeh said.

Most of the victims were from foreign backgrounds, and prosecutors are investigating whether the acts targeted the “real or supposed race, ethnicity, nationality or religion” of the victims.

“What happened here today was a racist terrorist attack,” said French President Emmanuel Macron, visiting Trappes later.

“This is a turning point because it is the first time there has been a terrorist act aimed at killing our compatriots and our children for the colour of their skin or what their religion is thought to be,” he said.

“We must not yield anything to the ideas that are taking root in the Republic that could justify such behaviour.”

The 12-year-old girl shot eight times was “seriously wounded” but in a stable condition, the mayor of La Verriere, Nicolas Dainville, told AFP.

Police arrested the alleged shooter – a 39-year-old man, according to a source familiar with the case – in nearby Coignieres.

Officers found him in possession of a submachine gun and tear-gas grenades, according to a police source.

He had also booby-trapped his flat with three gas canisters and electric wires “connected to a timer”, according to anti-terrorism prosecutors. 

Prosecutors said they had opened an investigation for “murder in connection with a terrorist enterprise”.

BURSTS OF GUNFIRE

Rabeh said the man was firing sporadically from his car and that the person killed was “of African origin”.

One of the wounded, “in critical condition, is of north African origin”, he added.

It was “objectively a racist, probably Islamophobic attack,” the mayor said, calling for national unity as the toll rose from an earlier count of four wounded.

Dainville said that two of the wounded in his town – cleaners attending to a school Friday morning when the shooter got out of his car to open fire – were of African origin.

Laurent Nunez, France’s interior minister, travelled to the two affected towns. He called the shooting “clearly a terrorist crime”.