French police seek vehicle after soldiers hit and injured in Paris

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French police seek vehicle after soldiers hit and injured in Paris

 

Police work near the scene where French soliders were hit and injured by a vehicle in the western Paris suburb of Levallois-Perret, France, August 9, 2017. REUTERS/Benoit Tessier

 

PARIS (Reuters) - French soldiers were hit and injured by a vehicle in the western Paris suburb of Levallois-Perret, Paris police authorities said on Wednesday, adding that a security operation was underway in the area.

 

"Police intervention is underway. Search underway for vehicle," the Paris police department said in a Tweet.

 

Six soldiers were hurt, four of them lightly and two more seriously, a police department official added in response to a query from Reuters.

 

(Reporting by Sudip Kar-Gupta and Caroline Paillez; Editing by Brian Love)

 

-- © Copyright Reuters 2017-08-09

 

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Police work near the scene where French soliders were hit and injured by a vehicle in the western Paris suburb of Levallois-Perret, France, August 9, 2017. REUTERS/Benoit Tessier

 

Police and soldiers secure the scene where French soliders were hit and injured by a vehicle in the western Paris suburb of Levallois-Perret, France, August 9, 2017. REUTERS/Benoit Tessier

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Local French mayor: Levallois car hitting soldiers was deliberate act

 

PARIS (Reuters) - Patrick Balkany, the local mayor for the western Paris suburb of Levallois-Perret, had "no doubt" that Wednesday's incident in which a car drove into a group of soldiers, was a deliberate act.

 

"Without any doubt, it was a deliberate act," Balkany told BFM TV.

 

"It's an odious act of aggression," Balkany also said, adding that the car in question was a BMW.

 

(Reporting by Sudip Kar-Gupta; Editing by Gus Trompiz)

 

-- © Copyright Reuters 2017-08-09

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Soldiers secure the area near the scene where French soliders were hit and injured by a vehicle in the western Paris suburb of Levallois-Perret, France, August 9, 2017. REUTERS/Benoit Tessier

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Car rams into soldiers, injuring six, in Paris suburb

 

A police investigator and an armed soldier work near the scene where French soliders were hit and injured by a vehicle in the western Paris suburb of Levallois-Perret, France, August 9, 2017. REUTERS/Benoit 

 

PARIS (Reuters) - A car rammed into a group of soldiers in a Parisian suburb on Wednesday, injuring six in what its mayor called a deliberate act.

 

Levallois-Perret Mayor Patrick Balkany said a BMW parked in an alley drove into the soldiers as they left their barracks to go on patrol duty.

 

Police said two of the six were seriously injured.

 

Speaking to broadcaster BFM TV, Balkany said that what he called a "disgusting" act of aggression was "without any doubt" premeditated.

 

France's police department said in a message on Twitter that a search for the vehicle was under way.

 

France remains on maximum alert after a string of attacks in which Islamist militants or Islamist-inspired attackers have killed more than 230 people over the past two years.

 

Levallois-Perret is situated on the western edge of Paris.

 

(Reporting by Sudip Kar-Gupta, Caroline Paillez and Brian Love; editing by John Stonestreet)

 

-- © Copyright Reuters 2017-08-09

 

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Car rams into soldiers, injuring six, in Paris suburb

By Benoit Tessier and Johnny Cotton

 

Soldiers secure the street near the scene where French soliders were hit and injured by a vehicle in the western Paris suburb of Levallois-Perret, France, August 9, 2017. REUTERS/Benoit 

 

PARIS (Reuters) - A car rammed into a group of soldiers in a Parisian suburb on Wednesday, injuring six before speeding off in what its mayor called a deliberate act.

 

Levallois-Perret Mayor Patrick Balkany said the car, a BMW, was parked in an alley before it accelerated into the soldiers as they left their barracks to go on patrol duty.

 

Police said two of the six were seriously injured.

 

Speaking to broadcaster BFM TV, Balkany said that what he called a "disgusting" act of aggression was "without any doubt" premeditated.

 

"It all happened very quickly. The vehicle did not stop. It hurtled at them ... it accelerated rapidly." The soldiers were rushed to hospital, he added.

 

France remains on maximum alert after a string of attacks in which Islamist militants or Islamist-inspired attackers have killed more than 230 people over the past two years.

 

Police said a search for the driver and the vehicle, which they described as dark-coloured and probably a BMW, was under way.

 

It was parked on the edge of the Place de Verdun square in the centre of Levallois, which is situated on the western edge of Paris.

 

The area, quieter than normal in peak summer holiday season, was cordoned off after the incident, which happened at around 8:00 a.m., police said.

 

Levallois-Perret is about 5 km (3 miles) from city centre landmarks such as the Eiffel Tower and the Elysee Presidential Palace.

 

(Reporting by Sudip Kar-Gupta, Caroline Paillez and Brian Love; editing by John Stonestreet)

 

-- © Copyright Reuters 2017-08-09

[LammyTS1]

Attempted murder. 

 

Life sentance. 

[bberrythailand]

26 minutes ago, LammyTS1 said:

Attempted murder. 

 

Life sentance. 

 

 

3 months in jail in France.

 

 

 

[RichardColeman]

Wait for it - failed asylum seeker

[Estrada]

8 hours ago, RichardColeman said:

Wait for it - failed asylum seeker

12 hours ago... Not a failed asylum seeker. The hit and run driver was an Algerian and has already been arrested after being shot by soldiers who pursued him. Algeria was a former French colony and he had a  permit to reside there.

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Car rams into soldiers in Paris suburb, suspect arrested after manhunt

By Richard Lough and Benoit Tessier

 

Police and rescue forces are seen on the scene where the man suspected of ramming a car into a group of soldiers on Wednesday in the Paris suburb of Levallois-Perret was shot and arrested on the A16 motorway, near Marquise, France, August 9, 2017. REUTERS/Pascal Rossignol

 

PARIS (Reuters) - French police shot and arrested a man on Wednesday suspected of deliberately ramming his car into a group of soldiers in a Parisian suburb hours earlier, injuring six of them in what the government called a deliberate attack.

 

Armed police from elite units tracked the fugitive for five hours after the attack before cornering him on a motorway in northern France and shooting him several times.

 

The suspect was unarmed when he was trapped by police some 260 km (162 miles) north of Paris where he had attacked the soldiers in the affluent suburb of Levallois-Perret, a judicial source said. There was no immediate word on his condition.

 

The man appeared to have lain in wait for the soldiers in a pedestrian zone near their base in Levallois-Perret on the northwestern edge of the capital where France's domestic counter-terrorism agency is based.

 

He accelerated his BMW car into the troops, who were starting their patrol, when they were a few metres away, Interior Minister Gerard Collomb said, before speeding off and sparking a huge manhunt.

 

"This was a deliberate act, not an accident," Collomb told reporters outside the hospital where the three more seriously injured victims were being treated.

 

He said a terrorism investigation had been launched.

 

The soldiers were part of Operation Sentinel, launched in the wake of Islamist attacks in Paris in early 2015. The Levallois-Perret attack was the 15th on troops and police in the last two-and-a-half years, many of them Islamic State-inspired.

 

Prime Minister Edouard Philippe told lawmakers in parliament that the "main suspect" had been detained. One policeman was injured by a stray bullet in the operation.

 

A judicial source said the suspect was an Algerian national who held legitimate papers to be in France. Investigators raided several properties associated with the suspect, identified by the daily newspaper Le Parisien as 37-year-old Hamou B.

 

"I saw the traffic stop ahead of me," said one truck driver who identified himself as Teddy, speaking on the motorway after the suspect was seized.

 

"The police got out their cars, took cover and started firing. The gunshots were coming from everywhere."

 

The BMW car, the same car that was used in the attack, was riddled with bullet holes and surrounded by balaclava-clad police officers, a Reuters cameraman said.

 

"PRE-MEDITATED"

 

Armed Forces Minister Florence Parly said Wednesday's attack was proof there remained an active threat and that the 7,000-strong Sentinel force "was more necessary than ever".

 

Three soldiers had light injuries, Parly said, while three others were more gravely hurt but not as seriously as previously thought.

 

Patrick Balkany, mayor of Levallois-Perret, called it a "disgusting" act of aggression that was "without any doubt" premeditated.

 

Nadia Lephrohon, resident of an apartment building directly above the scene, said she heard a dull thud and then soldiers shouting.

 

"I saw two soldiers on the ground and the other soldiers were shouting. There was another man out there, a bystander, who was saying 'It's a car. It went that way. Follow it! Run after it!'", Lephrohon said.

 

Islamist militants or Islamist-inspired attackers have killed more than 230 people on French soil since January 2015, including one attack on Paris and another on the Riviera city of Nice.

 

Operation Sentinel has put heavily armed combat troops in public view as they patrol key sites in military fatigues, at an annual cost running into hundreds of millions of euros.

 

While it did not prevent the November 2015 attack when gunmen killed 130 people in Parisian cafes and a concert hall, Sentinel troops have disarmed or killed would-be attackers on several occasions since – including a February incident where a machete-wielding assailant attacked soldiers outside the Louvre art museum, and another on Saturday at the Eiffel tower.

 

This year, assailants attacked soldiers at the Louvre museum site in Paris in February and at Orly airport in March. An assailant shot a policeman dead on the Champs Elysees avenue in the capital in April.

 

Levallois-Perret is about 5 km (3 miles) from city centre landmarks such as the Eiffel Tower and the Elysee Presidential Palace.

 

(Additional reporting by Sudip Kar-Gupta, Caroline Paillez, Brian Love and Johnny Cotton in Paris, Fabian Bellouit in Marquise; Writing by Brian Love and Richard Lough; editing by Richard Balmforth)

 

 

-- © Copyright Reuters 2017-08-10

[Rimmer]

A troll post has been removed