A man previously known to French anti-terror authorities was fatally shot early Saturday at Orly airport after struggling to steal a soldier’s gun and earlier assaulting a police officer at a traffic stop in a northeastern Paris suburb, the Paris prosecutor said, reports The Washington Post.
The suspect, whom authorities identified as the French-born Ziyed Ben Belgacem, 39, told the officers he attacked in Orly airport that he wanted to die "in the name of Allah" and that "whatever happens, there will be deaths," according to François Molins, the prosecutor.
Just before 8.30 a.m. Saturday, Belgacem approached a squadron of three officers on patrol in Orly's south terminal and took one of them hostage, a woman. He held a gun to her head and, contrary to earlier reports, managed to wrestle control of her assault rifle.
Molins said the suspect intended to open fire on the crowd of travellers.
Earlier Saturday morning, Belgacem shot and lightly wounded a police officer at a traffic stop and then proceeded to hijack a woman’s car at gunpoint in another nearby suburb, the Paris prosecutor confirmed. He continued to Orly to the southeast of Paris, where he grabbed the assault rifle from a security officer on duty. The stolen car was recovered at the airport, French authorities said.
French President François Hollande said authorities would investigate whether the attacker “had a terrorist plot behind him,” but the Paris prosecutors’ office had already announced that its anti-terrorism section had taken over the investigation.
Molins confirmed to reporters Saturday afternoon that the Belgacem, who was previously known to authorities for several drug and robbery offenses, had been flagged on the government’s radar for "Islamist radicalism" in the past, following an examination during an earlier prison stint.
In November 2015, Molins said, following the deadly Islamic State-orchestrated attacks on Paris, his name had been among those whose homes French authorities had searched in connection with an investigation into radicalized networks.
The searches - authorized under France's official "state of emergency," passed in the wake of the Paris attacks - have been frequently criticized as violating the civil liberties of those searched and detained, and rights advocates have pushed the government to define "Islamist radicalism" more clearly.
The man’s father, brother and cousin had also been detained, Molins said.
The other two soldiers on duty in Orly fired a total of eight rounds at Belgacem. No other injuries were reported.
Witnesses in the airport terminal described rapid gunfire in a bustling terminal full of weekend travellers.
“We had queued up to check in for the Tel Aviv flight when we heard three or four shots nearby,” one traveller, Franck Lecam, told Agence France-Presse.
“The soldiers took aim at the man, who in turn pointed the gun he had seized at the two soldiers,” another witness, identified only as Dominique, said on France’s BFM television.
The officers attacked belonged to Operation Sentinel, Molins said, a squadron of French security forces established in 2015 to combat terrorism.
Devised after the attack on the satirical Charlie Hebdo newspaper in January 2015, Operation Sentinel is a special force that includes nearly 10,000 soldiers, about half of whom patrol in the Paris region, mostly at tourist destinations and commuter hubs.
About 3,000 passengers were evacuated from the south terminal, and passengers in Orly’s west terminal were confined, Pierre-Henri Brandet, a spokesman for France's interior ministry, said Saturday morning.
Shortly after noon, the police search ended and passengers from 13 flights stranded on the airport tarmac were able to disembark, authorities said. Flights resumed.
The Saturday incident mirrored a shooting on February 3rd, when an Egyptian man attacked Sentinel soldiers outside the Louvre museum and was then seriously wounded.
France has been under an official state of emergency since November 2015, when a cell of Islamic State militants carried out attacks on a concert hall, a stadium and a number of cafes across Paris. One hundred thirty people were killed.
Hollande’s socialist government has struggled to stave off a steady stream of attacks that have continued despite heightened security precautions, including the launch of Operation Sentinel and the number of home seizures that critics say are ineffective and have infringed on civil liberties in the process.