A brutal but chaotic attack on police and civilians in southern France has left at least four people dead, including a suspected terrorist, according to reports. Police surrounded a supermarket on Friday morning as a hostage-taking played out following a shooting attack on police officers east of Toulouse. Witnesses said the man who stormed into the store and took shoppers hostage claimed he was loyal to the Islamic State of Iraq and Syria (ISIS).
Both French President Emmanuel Macron and Prime Minister Edouard Philippe said the information available suggested it was a terrorist attack.
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 the suspect went into a “Super U” store, taking a number of shoppers hostage.
France’s Interior Ministry confirmed that two people were killed in the store. Several hours later, the Ministry and France’s police union said officers had raided the grocery store, killing the suspect in the process.
Not long after the standoff at the grocery store began, officials told French television that most, if not all of the civilians who had been trapped inside the store were out safely.
One officer shot in Carcassone was seriously wounded.
French media said the suspect hijacked the car used in the attack, killing one person with a shot to the head as he did so. That death, also in Carcassone according to BFMTV and the Le Monde newspaper, would bring the total number of victims killed to three. At least three others were said to be injured in the attack at the grocery store.
Macron said in a televised address from neighboring Belgium that he would return within hours to help coordinate his government’s response, but that all details would be provided from the Paris prosecutor’s office, which handles terrorism investigations in France.
“Everything leads us to believe it is a terror attack,” said Macron.
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.”
The suspect was quickly identified by French law enforcement as a young local man known to them as a petty criminal. Interior Minister Gerard Collomb said the gunman, Redouane Lakdim, 26, was from Carcassonne, where the attacks started.
“He was known for petty crimes. We had monitored him and thought there was no radicalization,” Collomb said. He confirmed that Lakdim had demanded the release of terrorists in French custody, but said the hostage taker had, “acted alone, there was no one with him.”
Media reports earlier said the gunman, of Moroccan descent, demanded the release of Salah Abdeslam, the only surviving suspect in the attacks on a concert venue and other locations in Paris in November 2015 which left 130 people dead.
Abdeslam was recently transported back to Belgium to face charges there. He is believed to have provided key logistical support for the Paris attackers, and either decided not to blow himself up and abandoned his explosive vest, or had it malfunction on him. As CBS News Radio correspondent Elaine Cobbe reports, as the lone surviving suspect in the Paris attacks, Abdeslam has become something of a poster boy for ISIS supporters.
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.
After Friday’s attack in southern France concluded, ISIS released a brief statement claiming responsibility. The statement did not offer any details to suggest advance knowledge of the attack by Lakdim.
CBS News correspondent Elizabeth Palmer reported that if, as it appeared, Friday’s attack was the work of a lone gunman with little or no help from any coordinated terror cell, it may not prompt a change in France’s already heightened security posture.
President Trump was briefed on the incident, but “Face the Nation” host Margaret Brennan reported that the White House had not yet determined whether it was part of a broader ISIS plot, or the work of a single actor. Once French officials provide the name of the suspect to their U.S. counterparts they will be run through U.S. databases to see if they match any American intelligence files. Brennan said the U.S. government was likely to offer its assistance.
