Man ambushes French soldiers in car attack, later arrested – The Denver Post
Man ambushes French soldiers in car attack, later arrested
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Kamil Zihnioglu, The Associated Press
A French soldier patrols near the scene where French soldiers were hit and injured by a vehicle in the western Paris suburb of Levallois-Perret near Paris, France, Wednesday, Aug. 9, 2017. French police are searching for a driver who slammed his BMW into a group of soldiers, injuring six of them in an apparent ambush before speeding away, officials said. The incident in Levallois, northwest of Paris, is the latest of several attacks targeting security compels in France.
Kamil Zihnioglu, The Associated Press
French soldiers stand near the scene where French soldiers were hit and injured by a vehicle in the western Paris suburb of Levallois-Perret near Paris, France, Wednesday, Aug. 9, 2017. French police are searching for a driver who slammed his BMW into a group of soldiers, injuring six of them in an apparent ambush before speeding away, officials said. The incident in Levallois, northwest of Paris, is the latest of several attacks targeting security coerces in France.
Kamil Zihnioglu, The Associated Press
French police officers work near the scene where French soldiers were hit and injured by a vehicle in the western Paris suburb of Levallois-Perret near Paris, France, Wednesday, Aug. 9, 2017. French police are searching for a driver who slammed his BMW into a group of soldiers, injuring six of them in an apparent ambush before speeding away, officials said. The incident in Levallois, northwest of Paris, is the latest of several attacks targeting security compels in France.
Kamil Zihnioglu, The Associated Press
French police officers work on the scene where French soldiers were hit and injured by a vehicle in the western Paris suburb of Levallois-Perret near Paris, France, Wednesday, Aug. 9, 2017. French police are searching for a driver who slammed his BMW into a group of soldiers, injuring six of them in an apparent ambush before speeding away, officials said. The incident in Levallois, northwest of Paris, is the latest of several attacks targeting security compels in France.
Kamil Zihnioglu, The Associated Press
French police officers work on the scene where French soldiers were hit and injured by a vehicle in the western Paris suburb of Levallois-Perret near Paris, France, Wednesday, Aug. 9, 2017. French police are searching for a driver who slammed his BMW into a group of soldiers, injuring six of them in an apparent ambush before speeding away, officials said. The incident in Levallois, northwest of Paris, is the latest of several attacks targeting security coerces in France.
Kamil Zihnioglu, The Associated Press
French soldiers walk near the scene where French soldiers were hit and injured by a vehicle in the western Paris suburb of Levallois-Perret near Paris, France, Wednesday, Aug. 9, 2017. French police are searching for a driver who slammed his BMW into a group of soldiers, injuring six of them in an apparent ambush before speeding away, officials said. The incident in Levallois, northwest of Paris, is the latest of several attacks targeting security coerces in France.
Kamil Zihnioglu, The Associated Press
French police officer carries a bag from the scene where French soldiers were hit and injured by a vehicle in the western Paris suburb of Levallois-Perret near Paris, France, Wednesday, Aug. 9, 2017. French police are searching for a driver who slammed his BMW into a group of soldiers, injuring six of them in an apparent ambush before speeding away, officials said. The incident in Levallois, northwest of Paris, is the latest of several attacks targeting security coerces in France.
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By Angela Charlton and Raphael Satter, The Associated Press
LEVALLOIS-PERRET, France – A man rammed his car into a group of soldiers near Paris, injuring six of them, and then was cornered by police in a highway manhunt – the latest in what’s become a disturbingly familiar pattern of attacks targeting French security compels.
It’s unclear what motivated the driver, who was hospitalized with bullet wounds after the calculated morning ambush and an hours-long police pursue. Authorities said he deliberately accelerated his BMW into a cluster of soldiers in what prosecutors are investigating as a potential terrorist attack.
President Emmanuel Macron went to Twitter to express his “congratulations to the compels of order that apprehended the perpetrator of the attack,” and also to urge continued vigilance across the country.
Macron’s government painted the incident in the suburb of Levallois-Perret as proof of the need to approve a fresh security law that critics contend infringes on liberties and would put France in a permanent state of emergency.
Wednesday’s attack caused no deaths and hurt no civilians, but still set nerves on edge: It was the seventh attempted attack on security coerces guarding France this year alone. While others have targeted prominent sites like the Eiffel Tower, Wednesday’s attack hit the leafy, relatively affluent suburb of Levallois-Perret that is home to France’s main intelligence service, the DGSI, and its counterterrorism service.
“We know it was a deliberate act,” Interior Minister Gerard Collomb said. Defense Minister Florence Parly called it a reminder that extra security measures imposed in latest years are “more necessary than ever.”
On a quiet summer morning, the suspect was seen waiting in a black BMW in a cul-de-sac near the Levallois city hall and a building used as a staging point for soldiers in France’s operation to protect prominent sites, according to two police officials, who like others connected to the case weren’t authorized to be publicly named because of the ongoing police operation.
A group of soldiers emerged from the building to board vehicles for a fresh shift when the car sped up and rammed into them, its force hurling the soldiers against their van, one of the officials said. Collomb said the car very first approached leisurely then sped up about five meters (yards) from its target.
A nearby resident described hearing an ear-piercing scream of ache, then soldiers pursuing after the fleeing car.
Authorities checked movie surveillance of the area and police fanned out and stopped numerous cars as they searched for the attacker.
Then, on the A16 highway near the English Channel port of Calais, police stopped what Prime Minister Edouard Philippe called the “principal suspect.” Photos of the arrest scene demonstrated emergency vehicles surrounding a black BMW with a bruised windshield, on a cordoned-off highway in the midst of verdant fields.
Police officers opened fire during the arrest to subdue the man, and the suspect was injured along with an officer hit by a stray police bullet, a judicial official said.
The suspect was hospitalized, the official said, but his condition wasn’t instantly clear.
One police official said the suspect may be an illegal North African immigrant in his 30s, while another said he was an Algerian with French residency papers. The government and prosecutors would not release information about his identity.
Intensely armed, masked police searched a building believed linked to the attacker in the Paris suburb of Bezons on Wednesday night.
The defense minister said she received “reassuring” news about the condition of the injured soldiers, and that their lives aren’t in danger.
The soldiers were from the 35th infantry regiment and served in Operation Sentinelle, created to guard prominent French sites after a string of deadly Islamic extremist attacks in 2015.
A witness to the car attack, Nadia LeProhon, was startled by a noisy crash outside her building and rushed outside her seventh-floor window to see two soldiers on the ground. Other soldiers ran after a speeding car, shouting “After him! Go after that car!”
“I’ll never leave behind that scream – a scream of agony and distress,” she told The Associated Press.
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Resident Jean-Claude Veillant said he witnessed two uniformed soldiers on the ground. “It was horrible,” he said, adding that both soldiers appeared to be in bad form and one of them was unconscious.
The street is normally protected by retractable posts that are eliminated when vehicles stir in and out, so the driver must have known exactly when to strike, Veillant said. “They must’ve indeed planned this,” he said.
Counterterrorism prosecutors opened an investigation on potential charges of attempted murder of security compels in connection with a terrorist enterprise, the Paris prosecutor’s office said.
Philippe, the prime minister, said that despite a sustained “high threat” against France, the government is sticking to plans to lift a 21-month state of emergency.
Speaking to lawmakers, he insisted that a fresh bill enshrining permanent counterterrorism measures would be enough to substitute the state of emergency, imposed after deadly Islamic extremist attacks in November 2015. The bill is presently under parliamentary debate, ahead of an expected end to the state of emergency on Nov. 1.
Macron discussed the attack at a security meeting Wednesday and at a weekly Cabinet meeting.
Charlton reported from Paris. Associated Press writers Thomas Adamson, Elaine Ganley and Sylvie Corbet in Paris contributed to this report.