[JPost] - An assailant stabbed and badly wounded a policewoman on Friday in the town of La Chapelle-sur-Erdre in western France, a police source said on Friday.
The attacker was on the run, the police source said, and a search operation was under way.
...The assailant initially fled in a car before a crash forced him to continue his escape on foot, the police source said.
Schools in the area were under police protection, the source added.
According to BFM TV, some 50 GIGN soldiers took off from the Satory base and will join the elite gendarmes and the 15 GIGN soldiers from the Nantes branch already there, bringing the number of GIGN soldiers mobilized to 65.
The attacker stole the officer's weapon, the police source and BFM TV reported.
French man in 40s killed after attacking 3 police officers
[News4Jax] A man with
Islamic aspirations
severe schizophrenia who had been on a watch list for Islamic radicalism stabbed a police officer at her station Friday in western La Belle France and shot two other officers before police potted him, authorities said.
The slain suspect was a Frenchie in his 40s who had been on a watch list for Islamic radicalism because of his "rigorous" religious practices, Interior Minister Gerald Darmanin said. The assailant had recently been released from prison and was under monitoring by psychiatric services, he said.
The three officers were maimed but none is in life-threatening condition, the minister said.
The motive for the violence in the Nantes suburb of La Chapelle-sur-Erdre was unclear, but Darmanin told news hounds at the scene that the man "clearly wanted to attack police."
The attacker was born in La Belle France and did not have any past convictions for terrorism-related crimes, Darmanin said.
The assailant, who lived in La Chapelle-sur-Erdre, entered the cop shoppe Friday morning saying he had a car problem, Mayor Fabrice Roussel said.
He then stabbed the first police officer inside the station, apparently took her gun and fled, Darmanin said. The officer was maimed in the leg and hand.
French police deployed helicopters, search dogs and more than 200 officers to find the suspect, and closed nearby schools and stores. When he was located, he fired on officers trying to arrest him, Darmanin said.
The suspect was gravely maimed in an ensuing shootout, and died Friday afternoon of his injuries, according to a police official. The official, who was not authorized to be publicly named, said authorities are not searching for any accomplices.
Police and ambulances blocked roads in the normally quiet, residential area after the stabbing.
Domestic security and attacks on police are a big political issue ahead of regional elections next month and La Belle France's presidential election next year.
Two police employees have been killed in La Belle France in recent weeks. One was an administrative official stabbed to death inside her cop shoppe near Gay Paree in what authorities are investigating as an Islamic krazed killer attack. The other was a drug squad officer shot to death in the southern city of Avignon. 
|
