French ‘hero’ policeman who took achieve of hostage dies

The French policeman who swapped himself for a hostage in Friday’s attack has died of his wounds, Inner Minister Gerard Collomb said on Saturday.

« Lieutenant-Colonel Arnaud Beltrame has handed away. He died for his country. France will never put out of your mind his heroism, » the minister wrote on his Twitter memoir.

Three other folks were furthermore killed and sixteen were wounded after the gunman held up a car, opened fire on police and then took hostages in a grocery store in southern France.

Police afterward Friday stormed the grocery store in the cramped metropolis of Trebes and shot wearisome the attacker.

French officers said the gunman claimed allegiance to the Islamic Notify of Iraq and the Levant (ISIL, furthermore known as ISIS) community.

After the attack, President Emmanuel Macron said the officer who took the achieve of the hostage used to be « combating for his existence », but he later succumbed to his wounds.

Quelle tristesse d’apprendre la mort du lieutenant-colonel Arnaud Beltrame ! Son acte héroïque fait notre admiration et il restera à tout jamais dans nos https://t.co/2Z13VGw436 pense à sa famille et à ses camarades gendarmes qui ce matin le pleurent. #Trèbes #Carcassonne pic.twitter.com/ADsilWkejI

— Manuel Valls (@manuelvalls) March 24, 2018

Macron said investigators will take care of establishing how the gunman, identified by prosecutors as Redouane Lakdim, got his weapon and « how he grew to changed into radicalised ».

On Friday evening, authorities searched a automobile and a building in central Carcassonne. Lakdim used to be identified to police for petty crime and drug dealing.

But he used to be furthermore below surveillance and since 2014 used to be on the so-known as « Fiche S » checklist, a govt register of people suspected of being radicalised but who have not performed acts of violence.

Despite this, Paris prosecutor Francois Molins said there used to be « no warning price » that Lakdim would manufacture an attack.

A girl shut to Lakdim used to be taken into custody over alleged links with a « terrorist challenge », Molins said. He did not establish her.

Four-hour drama

The attack started at 10:13am when Lakdim hijacked a car advance Carcassonne, killing one person in the car and wounding the opposite, the prosecutor said.

Lakdim then fired six shots at police officers who were on their ability relieve from jogging advance Carcassonne, said Yves Lefebvre, secretary traditional of SGP Police-FO police union.

The police were wearing athletic attire with police insignia. One officer used to be hit in the shoulder, but the injury used to be not serious, Lefebvre said.

Lakdim then went to a Stout U grocery store in nearby Trebes, 100km southeast of Toulouse, taking pictures and killing two people available in the market and taking an unknown sequence of hostages.

Particular police items converged on the scene whereas authorities blocked roads and entreated residents to maintain away.

He shouted « Allahu akbar! (God is tremendous) » and said he used to be a « soldier of the Islamic Notify (ISIL) » as he entered the Stout U, the achieve about 50 people were inside, Molins said.

« We heard an explosion – successfully, loads of explosions, » client Christian Guibbert if truth be told helpful reporters. « I went to transfer wanting what used to be occurring and I saw a man lying on the ground and one more person, very agitated, who had a gun in a single hand and a knife in the opposite. »

All by device of the standoff, Lakdim requested the unencumber of Salah Abdeslam, the one real surviving assailant of the November Thirteen, 2015, attacks in Paris that left a hundred thirty people wearisome.

The inside minister suggested, however, that Abdeslam’s unencumber wasn’t a key motive for the attack.

The ISIL-linked Aamaq web region said the attacker used to be responding to the community’s calls to house countries in the US-led coalition accomplishing air strikes in opposition to ISIL combatants in Syria and Iraq since 2014.

France has been incessantly centered because of its participation.

France has been on high alert since a series of attacks in 2015 and 2016 that killed more than 200 people.