France hostage situation ends; 4 dead, including gunman

The gunman was later killed by police officers when they stormed the supermarket, according to Gérard Collomb, the interior minister.

As he entered the Super U market in Trèbes, about 50 miles southeast of Toulouse, and began shooting, the man shouted “God is great” in Arabic, and claimed to be acting on behalf of the Islamic State, witnesses said. His connection to the militant group, if any, was unclear.

Collomb, speaking to reporters from Trèbes, identified the gunman as Redouane Lakdim, a 26-year-old who lived in the neighboring city of Carcassonne and who was known to police as a petty criminal and drug dealer.

“But we had monitored him, and we believed that he was not radicalized,” Collomb said, adding that the gunman had “abruptly taken action,” without apparent prior planning, despite authorities’ surveillance.

Collomb said the gunman had acted alone.

Christian Guibbert, a retired policeman, told French media that he was shopping for groceries with his wife and his sister-in-law when he heard gunshots, and saw a “very agitated” man with a handgun and a knife, yelling and shooting into the ceiling.

“He was yelling threats at people, ‘everybody on the ground,'” Guibbert said. “'Allahu akbar,’ yes, he yelled that several times.”

He said he hid his wife, his sister-in-law and other customers in a meat locker and then called police. “That’s when he saw me and ran after me,” Guibbert said, describing how he escaped through an emergency exit.

The Islamic State claimed responsibility for the attack in a bulletin issued by its Amaq News Agency. It described the assailant as a “soldier of the Islamic State,” and the events as a response to the group’s call to target its enemies. That wording suggests that the attacker was inspired by the Islamic State, rather than directed by it.

Some French news organizations described the gunman as Moroccan, but government officials did not confirm that.

In a post on Twitter, Marine Le Pen, the hard-right, anti-immigrant politician who ran for president last year, linked the attack to immigration policies she contends are too permissive. “When will the government realize that we are at war?” she wrote.

Collomb said that Lakdim first hijacked a car in the area, killing one person and wounding another. He then crossed paths in Carcassonne with a group of police officers who were returning to their barracks after a jog, shooting at them and wounding one. The wound was not life-threatening.

Lakdim then drove to the supermarket in Trèbes, firing shots as he entered, killing two more people and taking one hostage. Collomb said a 45-year-old police officer “voluntarily” traded places with the hostage.

The officer, a lieutenant colonel with France’s gendarmerie, left his phone on a nearby table with an open line, Collomb said, enabling police outside to listen in.

After more gunshots were heard, police stormed the store and killed Lakdim. The lieutenant colonel was “seriously wounded” in the exchange of gunfire, Collomb said, praising him for an “act of heroism.”

Speaking at a news conference in Brussels, where he was attending a European Union summit meeting, President Emmanuel Macron said that “we believe that it is indeed a terrorist attack.”

Several French news reports said that Lakdim had demanded the release of Abdeslam — the sole surviving member of the Islamic State group that killed 130 people in and around Paris in a series of coordinated attacks in November 2015 — from detention in France.

Collomb did not directly confirm those reports, saying only that he had called for the “liberation of prisoners” and that it was unclear how he had chosen his targets Friday.

The Paris prosecutor’s office, which handles terrorism cases nationwide, said that a terrorism investigation had been opened and that the Paris prosecutor, François Molins, was heading to Trèbes.

France continues to be on high alert after deadly terrorist attacks struck the country in 2015 and 2016, mainly in Paris and Nice. Although there have not been any large attacks since the one in Nice in July 2016, there have been several smaller-scale assaults by lone individuals, and French authorities regularly announce that new plots have been thwarted.

The deadly attack in Trèbes is the first since Macron’s government lifted the state of emergency that had been in place since the November 2015 attacks and Parliament passed a counterterrorism law that made permanent some of the emergency measures. France also recently unveiled plans to toughen its stance on combating extremism in prisons and schools.

In a previous deadly attack, in October, two women were killed by a man with a knife at the main train station in the Mediterranean port city of Marseille.

Police officers and other security personnel have been targeted in a string of attacks over the past two years.

Three police officers — Franck Brinsolaro, Clarissa Jean-Philippe and Ahmed Merabet — were killed in attacks on the satirical newspaper Charlie Hebdo and in a Paris suburb in January 2015.

A year later, on the anniversary of the Charlie Hebdo attack, officers fatally shot a man with fake explosives as he tried to attack a police station in northern Paris.

In June 2016, a Paris police captain and his longtime partner were killed in their home as their 3-year-old son watched. The attack, in Magnanville, was claimed by the Islamic State.

In February 2017, a man armed with two large knives and shouting “God is great” in Arabic lunged at a military patrol near an entrance to the Louvre. He was shot.

A month later, a gunman was shot and killed by a military patrol at Orly Airport, south of Paris, after he attacked a soldier.

And in April, Xavier Jugelé, 37, a Paris police officer who had responded to the attack at the Bataclan concert hall in November 2015, fell victim to terrorism himself. He was in a police vehicle on the heavily guarded Champs-Élysées when a gunman opened fire, killing him and wounding two other officers, along with a bystander.