Paris police say officer killed in Champs-Elysees shooting
Posted Apr 20, 2017 04:14:40 PM.
Last Updated Apr 20, 2017 06:23:38 PM.
This article is more than 5 years old.
The Islamic State group has claimed responsibility for the shooting on Paris’ Champs Elysees that killed a police officer and left two others gravely wounded.
The attacker opened fire on a Paris police van was armed with an automatic firearm akin to a “war weapon” Thursday night, killed one officer and seriously wounded two others before police shot and killed him.
In a statement from its Amaq news agency, the group gave a pseudonym for the shooter indicating he was Belgian.
The claim of responsibility came unusually swiftly for the group, which has been losing territory in Iraq and Syria.
And the pseudonym, Abu Yusuf al-Beljiki, indicated that the attacker already had ties of some sort to Islamic State extremists.
French President Francois Hollande says he is convinced the circumstances surrounding the attack points to a terrorist act. He did not elaborate.
Hollande says has convened a National Defence and Security Council to meet on Friday morning.
Interior Ministry spokesman Pierre-Henry Brandet said no tourists or pedestrians were injured during the attack.
Brandet refused to give any specific detail about the suspect’s possible criminal history or affiliations.
Brandet says while witnesses have described only one gunman, the possibility of accomplices can’t be ruled out.
Badi Ftaiti, a Tunisian-born mason who has spent three decades in Paris, said the attack didn’t panic him.
But the 55-year-old says visitors to the French boulevard “were running, running….Some were crying. There were tens, maybe even hundreds of them.”
Asked whether the attack was evidence that “Paris isn’t Paris” anymore, as claimed by U.S. President Donald Trump, Ftaiti said the U.S. President is “barking up the wrong tree.”
He says: “Paris is Paris. It’s America that’s not America.”
President Trump said Thursday’s fatal shooting in Paris “looks like another terrorist attack.”
It was unclear how Trump concluded that terrorism may have been a factor. Paris police have yet to announce a motive.
The attack came three days before the first round of balloting in France’s tense presidential election. Security is high preceding the vote after police said they arrested two men Tuesday in what they described as a thwarted terror attack.
A French television station hosting a televised event with the 11 candidates running for president briefly interrupted its broadcast to report the shootings.
None of the candidates immediately commented.
