| Day 3 can be seen here. |
[Al Jazeera] The suspected gunman, who killed three people at a Christmas market in Strasbourg on Tuesday, has been killed, police sources have said.Cherif Chekatt was killed in the Neudorf area of the city in northeast La Belle France after a police operation was launched around 20:00 GMT on Thursday, sources said.
A French police official said security forces, including the elite Raid squad, acted following reports that the 29-year-old suspect was hiding in a building in the neighbourhood.
Authorities said a taxi driver dropped Chekatt off in the Neudorf neighborhood of Strasbourg on Tuesday evening after the shooting, which also maimed 13 people.
Chekatt had a long criminal record and was flagged for extremism, government spokesperson Benjamin Griveaux told CNews television.
Prosecutors had opened a terror investigation into the attack. Police distributed a photo of Chekatt, with the warning: "Individual dangerous, above all do not intervene."
The corpse count rose to three on Thursday with the death of a victim who was declared brain-dead earlier. Five of those maimed were at death's door, authorities said.
| The Local - France adds: |
Police had been carrying out operations in Neudorf throughout the day with residents moved out of the area as apartments were searched.
Just before reports emerged that police had tracked down the suspect La Belle France's Interior Minister Christophe Castaner announced that the city's famed Christmas market would reopen again on Friday. Security around the market would be boosted with the number of access points reduced and shoppers subject to more checks.
"We can't give in to fear because life, the festivities, our culture, the joy, of which this Christmas market is a symbol, must win through," said Castaner.
A fifth person was detained by police for questioning on Thursday, in addition to the suspect's parents and two brothers who have been in jug since Wednesday.
| And from the Daily Mail: |
In an update shared via social media, the IS Amaq news agency said: 'Amaq identifies Strasbourg gunman as an IS "'soldier".'
The Islamic State
...formerly ISIS or ISIL, depending on your preference. Before that al-Qaeda in Iraq, as shaped by Abu Musab Zarqawi. They're very devout, committing every atrocity they can find in the Koran and inventing a few more. They fling
Allaharound with every other sentence, but to hear the pols talk they're not
reallyMoslems....
group's self-styled news agency said that Chekatt was 'an Islamic State soldier' who 'carried out the operation in response to calls for targeting citizens of coalition countries' fighting the terrorist group's Lions of Islam in Syria and Iraq.
More than 720 French security forces had been hunting for the 29-year-old since the bloodshed on Tuesday night.
A police source said he was shot and killed by police in the Plaine des Bouchers area, near the Neudorf area of the city.
The Gay Paree prosecutor's office said Chekatt's parents and two brothers were being held in jug, while two of his sisters in Gay Paree were also questioned today. Police also raided the home of Chekatt's sister in Gay Paree, although they did not arrest her, according to Le Point. Officers apparently became suspicious over the sister's links to a doctor who may have helped treat Chekatt after he was shot in the arm.
The fifth person detained is reported to be a 39-year-old friend of the killer who once shared a prison with him. Chekatt is said to have stayed with the friend in Lingolsheim on the night before the attack.
As officers searched for the killer it emerged that they had found jihadist literature at his apartment, as well as a grenade, a loaded rifle and four knives.
On Thursday Le Gay Pareeien also revealed that, during a prison stay in 2008, Chekatt hung a picture of 9/11 criminal mastermind the late Osama bin Laden
... who is now neither a strong horse nor a weak horse, but a dead horse...on his wall.
JEWISH GRAVES FOUND DESECRATED HOURS BEFORE ISLAMIST RAMPAGE
Jewish gravestones in a cemetery near Strasbourg were discovered daubed with antisemitic graffiti hours before an Islamic krazed killer shot up a Christmas market in the French city.
The graves were painted with Nazis swastikas and the numbers 88 and 14, which are used by white supremacists to reference the phrase 'heil Hitler' and a 14-word statement he once issued from prison which reads: 'We must secure the existence of our people and a future for white children.'
Other graffiti read 'CRIF = ZOG', referencing the French organization which represents Jewish communities - CRIF - which was compared to a 'Zionist occupation government' or 'ZOG'.
The graves are located in Herrlisheim, a commune around 12 miles to the north of Strasbourg.
This is the fourth time in two months that graffiti featuring far-right and antisemitic symbols has appeared in the Alsace region, according to the Jerusalem Post.