Strasbourg Christmas market attack: French police launch operation in area where gunman was last seen
A police operation was underway Thursday in the Strasbourg neighborhood where the suspected gunman in an attack near a popular Christmas market that killed three people last was seen.
One French police official said security forces, including the elite Raid squad, took action based on "supposition only" that the suspect, Cherif Chekatt, 29, could be hiding in a building nearby two days after the attack.
The official could not be identified because he was not authorised to disclose details on the investigation.
Authorities said a taxi driver dropped Chekatt off in the Neudorf neighborhood of Strasbourg on Tuesday evening after the shooting that also wounded 13 people. The suspect also was wounded while exchanging fire with security forces, officials said.
More than 700 French security forces have been trying to trace Chekatt since the bloodshed on Tuesday, when he is suspected of shooting and stabbing shoppers at the city's popular annual market.
The fugitive Strasbourg gunman had an Osama bin Laden poster in his prison cell a decade ago and said he shot victims at point-blank range to "avenge brothers in Syria" and to kill "infidels", French reports said on Thursday.
The revelations came as French authorities said they would take prime suspect Chekatt dead or alive, as a massive manhunt continued in the eastern French city and the surrounding region, as well as across the nearby border with Germany.
"It doesn't matter [if he is taken alive]. The best thing would be to find him as quickly as possible,” government spokesman Benjamin Griveaux told CNews.
France on Wednesday night issued a wanted poster of the 29-year old local who has 27 previous convictions for theft and armed robbery and served sentences in French, German and Swiss jails.
The poster of Chekatt, who was wounded in an exchange of fire with security forces, included the warning: "Individual dangerous, above all do not intervene."
At least five of the victims of his Tuesday night killing spree remain in a serious condition.
More than 700 police were on Thursday engaged in the manhunt in eastern France, amid reports German police had launched a raid near the French border in Kehl.
Witnesses told investigators that he shouted "Allahu Akbar" (God is Greater) as he opened fire on the Christmas market, frequented by two million people every year.
The photo shows a bearded man of North African descent with a blemish on his forehead due to frequent prayer.
French authorities have said that Chekatt was placed on a terror watch list in 2015 and had been monitored closely in recent months.
However, according to Le Monde, he had slapped a picture of late al Qaeda chief Osama bin Laden on his prison wall as early as 2008, when he was 19 years old. “His radicalisation dates from before his time in prison,” a source close to the investigation told the paper.
Two years later, in 2010, he actively sought to proselytise other inmates and threatened them if they were not assiduous enough, it said.
According to Le Parisien, he told a taxi driver he forced to drive him out of Strasbourg's city centre on Tuesday at gunpoint that he had killed his victims at point blank range in the head to avenge “brothers in Syria” and to punish “infidels”.
The driver only escaped with his life because he had signs that he was a practicing Muslim in the car.
Police have set up checkpoints on the German border and questioning the suspect's entourage, including his parents and two brothers. Two of his 12 siblings are reportedly on a terror watchlist.
As the manhunt continued, the French government called on members of a nation-wide “yellow vest” revolt against high taxes and low purchasing power to stop or at least suspend their protests to allow French security forces to focus on the terror threat.
President Emmanuel Macron on Monday announced tax concessions to quell the month-long public revolt that sparked the worst riots in central Paris since the 1968 student riots.
Mr Griveaux said authorities had not yet decided whether to ban another planned "yellow vest" protest in Paris after three consecutive Saturdays of violence in the capital.
"We're simply saying at this stage that, given the events that are unfolding after the terrorist attack in Strasbourg, it would be preferable if everyone could go about a Saturday before the festive holidays in a quiet way,” he said.
