Police surrounded a supermarket in southern France on Friday as a deadly hostage-taking situation played out after the shooting of a police officer. At least one witnesses told French media that a man holding people in the store claimed he was loyal to the Islamic State of Iraq and Syria (ISIS), but police did not confirm any motive or the exact nature of the incident.
France’s Interior Ministry confirmed only that a security operation was underway in the Aude region of southern France.
BFMTV said four French police from Marseilles first came under fire from at least one gunman in a vehicle in the town of Carcassone. The car then proceeded several miles east to Trebes, where a suspect went into a “Super U” store, taking a number of shoppers hostage.
Not long after, however, officials told French television that most, if not all of the civilians who had been trapped inside the store were out safely. The gunman was said to be inside the store, possibly along with a police officer.
The officer who was shot in Carcassone was not said to have been critically wounded, but a French police union official told the Associated Press that the hostage taker had killed at least one person inside the supermarket. There were reports of at least two bodies seen laying motionless inside the store.
BFMTV said, according to a witness, that the the hostage-taker declared himself, “a soldier of the Islamic State,” and the mayor of Trebes told another channel that the suspect had entered the store screaming, “Allahu Akbar, (God is the greatest) I’ll kill you all.”
France’s elite counterterrorism police were responding to the situation and several helicopters were flying overhead. Witnesses said hundreds of officers had swarmed the area, which was being cordoned off.
Since January 2015 France has suffered a spate of jihadist attacks that have claimed more than 240 lives in total, according to the BBC. Five people remain in custody after an apparent failed bombing attempt in a chic Paris neighborhood in October, and that same month ISIS claimed a deadly stabbing in Marseille by a man who used multiple aliases. His motives remain unclear, and ISIS has often claimed responsibility for attacks in which it had no direct role.
© 2018 CBS Interactive Inc. All Rights Reserved.
