French prosecutors Monday were probing a terror motive after a man who had posted racist videos shot dead his Tunisian neighbour and badly wounded a Turkish man in the south of the country, reports FRANCE 24.
The shooting late Saturday in Puget-sur-Argens in the southern region of Var came after a Malian man was stabbed to death in April in a mosque, also in southern France, as concern grows over hate crimes against Muslims.
The shooting was initially investigated by regional prosecutors as a suspected murder motivated by the victim's ethnicity or religion.
But French national anti-terror prosecutors, known by their French acronym PNAT, announced Monday that they would be taking over the investigation.
The suspect wanted to "disrupt public order through terror", according to a source close to the case.
The suspected killer, a Frenchman born in 1971, fled the scene in a car but was arrested not far away after his partner alerted police.