Gunman Traumatizes Strasbourg, Killing at Least 3 in Possible Terror Attack
Emergency workers intervened after a shooting near the Christmas market in Strasbourg, France, on Tuesday.CreditAbdesslam Mirdass/Agence France-Presse — Getty Images
By Alissa J. Rubin and Aurelien Breeden
PARIS
— A gunman opened fire in the picturesque city of Strasbourg on Tuesday
night, killing at least three, wounding a dozen and sending terrorized
shoppers and tourists scrambling for safety in the middle of France’s
biggest Christmas market.
The
assailant, previously flagged by the authorities as a potential threat,
escaped police officers who quickly descended on the downtown Strasbourg
market’s cobblestone streets after the shooting started, shortly before
8 p.m., and ordered people to stay inside.
Hours
later, the assailant remained on the loose as the police expanded their
manhunt to the city’s periphery. Government officials said they were
investigating the shooting as a possible terrorist attack.
The
shooting immediately recalled the Islamic State and Al Qaeda assaults
that have haunted France and other European countries over the past
several years. It came just as France was grappling with a crisis over
the violent Yellow Vest economic protests that have roiled Paris and
other French cities for the past four weekends.
The
interior minister, Christophe Castaner, announced early Wednesday
morning that France had raised its terrorism threat level to the maximum
level, with reinforced border checks and increased security at markets
around the country. He described the gunman as “a man who was very
unfavorably known for criminal activity,” who was convicted by courts in
France and Germany, but he did not mention any ties to extremist
groups.
Strasbourg, a city of more
than a quarter million in eastern France’s Alsace region, is home to the
European Parliament and is known for its Christmas market, which
attracts more than a million visitors a year.
Witnesses
described scenes of panic as gunfire was heard, and then fear as
streets emptied out. Some said on social media that they had sheltered
in shops and restaurants in central Strasbourg as the police and
military patrolled the streets.
“From my hotel window I saw passers-by dragging someone who was injured and onlookers panicking,” Emmanuel Maurel,
a member of European Parliament who saw the aftermath, wrote on
Twitter. “Soldiers and police have cordoned off the area. We’re being
told to stay in the hotel.”
Mr.
Castaner, the interior minister, said that soldiers patrolling the area
shot at the assailant, who exchanged gunfire with the police twice over
the next hour.
Besides the three
people killed, six were seriously wounded and six were lightly injured,
he said. Before the attack, the authorities had designated the gunman,
who was not identified by name, a possible security risk, the local
prefecture said.
The Paris
prosecutor’s office said that it had opened a terrorism investigation,
and Mr. Castaner said the Paris prosecutor, who handles all terrorism
investigations nationwide, had arrived in Strasbourg.
Richard Corbett, a British member of European Parliament, said in a Twitter post
that he was on lockdown in a restaurant in the city center before the
police eventually evacuated the occupants. On the walk back to his
hotel, he said, he had “never seen the streets so deserted.”
Other
members of European Parliament were on lockdown inside government
buildings elsewhere in the city, and remained there for hours.
Charles
Tannock, another British member of the European Parliament, said on
Twitter that he was locked down inside the Parliament building. “I’m
safe but my heart & condolences are with the victims of this
atrocity,” he said.
Hundreds
of spectators were confined to the Rhenus arena, the home of SIG
Strasbourg, the city’s professional basketball team. Before they were
evacuated, they rose from their seats and sang a rendition of the French national anthem, La Marseillaise, in honor of the victims of the attack.
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As
the manhunt continued, the historic center of the city was cordoned
off, tram traffic was halted and officials told residents to stay at home.
Roland
Ries, the mayor of Strasbourg, told the BFM TV news channel that the
Christmas market has been tightly secured since 2015, when multiple
terrorist attacks struck France. Police officers regularly check bags
and coats and pat down visitors at several access points, he said.
“This
individual was able to enter, I don’t know how, inside that bubble,” he
said, referring to the gunman. “He escaped those checks and committed
these murders in the heart of the city, the heart of the Christmas
market.”
Mr. Ries announced that the
city would officially be in mourning on Wednesday and that the Christmas
market would be closed for the day.
The
police initially searched in the heavily immigrant Neusdorf
neighborhood, which is cut off by a highway from the historic city
center, with its half-timbered houses and towering cathedral. Then they
turned to looking in areas just outside Strasbourg, even as the city
itself remained virtually locked down.
The
Strasbourg Christmas market is closed to cars. The three locations
where the shootings took place were within the cobblestone-paved market,
where many small wooden stalls line the streets, festooned with
decorations.
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Some
stalls proffer cookies, warm mulled wine and traditional cakes and
breads. People buy small gifts for Christmas stockings and the
atmosphere is convivial, even if the market has become more commercial
in recent years.
The Strasbourg market was a target 18 years ago, when Al Qaeda-linked terrorists were caught shortly before launching an attack on the area close to the cathedral.
More recently, Berlin’s Christmas market was attacked in 2016 by an assailant who plowed a truck into the stalls, killing 12 people.
France
has been a prime target of terrorist plots in recent years. In 2015,
two armed men entered the offices of the satirical magazine Charlie Hebdo
in Paris, killing 12 people, including cartoonists, editors and police
officers. In November of that same year, nearly simultaneous attacks in and around Paris left 130 people dead and several hundred wounded.
The most recent attack
was in May, when a naturalized French citizen born in Chechnya stabbed
several people with a knife, killing one, in a crowded area of downtown
Paris near the Palais Garnier, home of the Paris Opera.
Earlier in the spring, a Frenchman who was born in Morocco killed one person while hijacking a car, and then entered a supermarket
in the small southern French town of Trèbes, killing two people and
taking a woman hostage. A police officer, Lt. Col. Arnaud Beltrame,
volunteered to change places with the hostage and was subsequently
killed by the attacker, Radouane Lakdim.
Strasbourg, which is on the French-German border, and nearby towns in Alsace-Lorraine have seen a number
of young men, mostly of North African descent, leave or try to leave
for Syria to join extremists there who were fighting with the Islamic
State.
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One of the gunmen in the Bataclan concert hall, one of the sites of the November 2015 Paris attacks, was originally from the Strasbourg area.
In 2016, French intelligence officers and the police detained
seven men, five of them in Strasbourg, who were preparing to “go into
action imminently,” according to the chief terrorism prosecutor. At
least two of those arrested in Strasbourg had earlier gone to Turkey
with the intention of crossing the border to Syria.
Megan Specia and Alan Yuhas contributed reporting from New York.
A version of this article appears in print on , on Page A13 of the New York edition with the headline: French Police Hunt for Gunman in Deadly Attack on Christmas Market. Order Reprints
