Several questions remain unexplained surrounding the attack that left a police officer dead and two others wounded on the Champs-Elysées on Thursday evening, notably whether the assailant who was shot dead, 39-year-old French national Karim Cheurfi, was in relation with Islamic State group, as it has claimed.
The tight presidential contest, in which four out of 11 candidates are leading opinion polls neck-and-neck, kicked off Saturday in France's overseas territories and départements, including Guiana, in South America, where a last-minute agreement to end a crippling social movement was reached between protestors and Paris.
French conservative presidential election candidate François Fillon, whose campaign has been plagued by a fake jobs scandal and his related placement under investigation for suspected fraud and misuse of company assets, has caused a storm of protest after he suggested, during a TV interview on Thursday, that a journalist questioning him was unaware of his manifesto because she was pregnant.
As voting in the first of a two-round presidential election begins in France on Sunday, the shootings in central Paris on Thursday which left one police officer dead and two others wounded, in an attack claimed by the Islamic State group, terrorism has led the agenda of the closing campaigns, notably among rightwing candidates.
French national Karim Cheurfi, 39, who was killed after he murdered one police officer and wounded two others on the Champs-Elysées avenue in central Paris on Thursday evening, in an attack claimed by the Islamic State group, was known to French security services and was released from prison on parole in 2015 after serving 14 years in prison for shooting two policemen and a third man in 2001.
At least one police officer was killed and two others wounded when a gunman, who was subsequently shot dead in return fire, attacked a police vehicle on the popular Champs-Elysées avenue in central Paris using what the interior ministry described as an 'automatic weapon'.
The centrist French presidential candidate Emmanuel Macron, leading polls before first-round voting on Sunday, held a phone conversation with former US president Barack Obama on Thursday, giving the former economy minister a clear boost just as his rivals are narrowing the gap between frontrunners.
Pregnant women treated with valproate, prescribed worldwide for epilepsy and bi-polar disorders and introduced in France in 1967, is believed to have caused malformations, and notably spina bifida, in up to 4,100 children in France, according to a study by the French National Agency for the Safety of Medicines.
At least one policeman died and another was seriously wounded in a shooting incident on the Champs-Elysées avenue in central Paris, reportedly after one or more assailants opened fire on a police bus.
French forein minister Jean-Marc Ayrault has said his country's intelligence services will present proof that the Syrian regime launched a chemical weapons attack on the town of Khan Sheikhun on April 4th which claimed 86 lives, which both Damascus and its allies, Russia and Iran, have denied.
