French President François Hollande said an investigation into the shooting dead of a man who attacked security forces at Paris Orly airport on Saturday will determine whether he “had a terrorist plot behind him”, reports FRANCE 24.
The essential details of the attack:
- The Paris Prosecutor's office said that the suspect, a 39-year-old Frenchman, had been known to police after he was detected of “having been radicalised” in 2015. He was also known by authorities for robbery and drug offences.
- The man's father and brother were detained by police for questioning Saturday afternoon and a search was also under way of the suspect’s home in the multi-ethnic Seine-Saint-Denis area.
- According to French authorities, the suspect was pulled over Saturday at 6.50am by a police patrol in northern Paris because he was driving too fast. As the man was showing the traffic patrol his ID papers, he allegedly pulled out a gun and fired pellets at the three officers, injuring one of them. Police fired back as the man fled in his car. He later abandoned that vehicle at Vitry, south of Paris, and stole another. That car was later found at Orly airport.
- At the airport the man attacked a female soldier, trying to grab her gun. He was then shot and killed by the soldier's two colleagues.
- A national police official said that about 3,000 people had been evacuated from Orly after the attack. While flights have begun to resume in the afternoon at the airport, they are yet to resume at the South Terminal where the shooting took place.
- President Hollande said that the attack shows that France's policy of having military patrols guarding public sites "is essential", and that the nation "must remain extremely vigilant".
Read more of this report with live reporting on the attack and its aftermath on FRANCE 24.