The Daily Star
The suspected gunman who killed three people at a Christmas market in Strasbourg has been killed, two police sources said Thursday, ending his 48 hours on the run.
Cherif Chekatt was killed in the Neudorf-Meinau area of the city after a police operation was launched around 20:00 GMT about 2 kilometers from where he launched his attack Tuesday.
More than 700 French security forces had been hunting for 29-year-old Chekatt since the bloodshed.
Chekatt was killed after firing on police officers, who returned fire, one of the sources said.
Reuters reporters near the scene heard three to four gunshots after a huge police operation.
A police helicopter had been circling overhead.
The death toll from Tuesday’s attack rose to three as police combed the city in the east of France for a second day and manned checkpoints on the German border.
Police issued a wanted poster in multiple languages for Chekatt, who was the main suspect in the attack and who had been on a watch list as a potential security threat.
Earlier in the day armed and masked police swooped on Strasbourg neighborhoods with elite RAID officers fanning out across three locations in late afternoon, including the area where Chekatt was last seen.
The Paris prosecutor’s office said Chekatt’s parents and two brothers were being held in custody. Two of his sisters in Paris were also questioned and one of their homes was searched, a judicial source said.
Interior Minister Christophe Castaner announced that the Strasbourg Christmas market would reopen Friday.
French President Emmanuel Macron expressed “the solidarity of the whole country” toward the victims as he arrived for a European summit in Brussels.
“It is not only France that has been hit … but a great European city as well,” he added, referring to the seat of the European Parliament in the eastern French city that lies on the border with Germany.
EU leaders held a minute of silence for the latest victims of the mass shooting.
Macron’s government meanwhile survived a no-confidence vote in Parliament over its handling of the “yellow-vest” protests that have swept the country.
The no-confidence motion, put forward by the center-left Socialists and the far-left party France Unbowed, won the support of 70 lawmakers, far short of the 289 needed, according to media reports.
As police hunted Chekatt, the French government urged protesters not to hold another round of demonstrations this weekend, given the strain on the country’s security forces.
