One Killed in Racist Terror Attack in France as 70,000 Police Deploy Amid Protests
A gunman in northern France has killed one person and injured five, including a 12-year-old girl who was seriously wounded, in what authorities are calling a racially motivated terrorist attack.
At about 10:30am on Friday, the gunman drove through the towns of Trappes and La Verriere, a working-class area on the outskirts of Paris with a large immigrant and Muslim population, and fired an automatic weapon randomly at a petrol station, a medical centre and a children's playground.
The rampage lasted about 15 minutes before the suspect, identified as 39-year-old Kevin T, was arrested. Local MP Laurent Mazaury said the suspect told police he wanted to kill foreigners, adding that they were facing a racist person.
French media reported that the man killed was a young Black man identified as Pengo Bassio Wangi, and that a woman wearing a headscarf and a 12-year-old girl wearing a headscarf were among those shot and injured.
The girl, of North African descent, was shot eight times according to her mother and was transferred to a children's hospital for surgery. Prosecutors said three of the five injured were in critical condition.
Interior Minister Laurent Nunez told reporters that investigations were ongoing but it was clearly a terrorist crime. Prosecutors said they were investigating whether the suspect had conspired with a terrorist group, and a member of his immediate family circle had also been taken into custody.
A local police chief told French media that authorities found an older-style semiautomatic weapon used in World War II in the suspect's car, as well as tear gas grenades.
The mayor of Trappes, Ali Rabeh, said the suspect was firing at random and wanted to cause a bloodbath in the communities, calling it objectively a racist attack, probably Islamophobic.
President Emmanuel Macron called the shooting a terrorist and racist attack, saying on X that he had reiterated the nation's support for all the victims and their families and reaffirmed an absolute determination to continue the fight against racism in all its forms. Prime Minister Sebastien Lecornu said the case was very serious and all resources of the security forces and judiciary were fully mobilised.
The shooting comes at a moment of great tension in France, as cost-of-living and student protests grip the country. Authorities decided to deploy 70,000 police officers on Saturday as demonstrations were expected to continue.
Mayor Rabeh, who has Moroccan roots, said the people targeted could just as easily have been his mother, brothers or sisters-in-law; a 12-year-old girl, he said, was between life and death after being targeted by automatic gunfire, and her crime was probably being of colour.
The girl's mother told broadcaster RTL: How could anyone do this to a child? She questioned whether her daughter had been targeted because she was wearing a headscarf, saying the child was born in France, in Trappes, and has the right to live her life in France.
Far-right National Rally leader Marine Le Pen also condemned the attack, calling it barbaric. Coming as a monitoring group reports rising racial discrimination against Muslims in Europe, the attack has raised fresh questions about hate crime across the continent.
