The black Peugeot 5008 rammed the police van carrying a prisoner because it emerged from a tollbooth on a significant freeway about 85 miles northwest of Paris. Hooded males with automated weapons leaped from the automobile, encircling the van and firing on it with unhurried precision for greater than two minutes.
Once they have been by means of, two jail guards have been useless — the primary to be killed within the line of responsibility in 32 years — three extra have been wounded, and the still-handcuffed prisoner the van was transporting, Mohamed Amra, had escaped, setting off a manhunt involving a number of hundred officers.
“The assault this morning, which took the lives of jail guards, is a shock to us all,” President Emmanuel Macron of France stated on X after the assault, which occurred round 11 a.m. on Tuesday and shocked the nation with its brazenness and violence. “We shall be uncompromising,” he added, promising to trace down the perpetrators.
However greater than 10 hours after the ambush, no hint of the assailants, who additionally used a white Audi that adopted the van, had been discovered, and Mr. Amra remained at giant.
Laure Beccuau, the highest Paris prosecutor, stated at a information convention on Tuesday that one jail guard was nonetheless in important situation. She stated investigators have been combing by means of a criminal offense scene that confirmed indicators of “excessive violence.” A nationwide unit specialised in organized crime is main the investigation, a transfer that’s reserved for essentially the most severe circumstances.
Ms. Beccuau stated that Mr. Amra, 30, had no prior drug-related convictions. However French information retailers reported that Mr. Amra was often known as La Mouche, or the Fly, and had been concerned in worldwide drug trafficking and arranged crime.
“It was a struggle operation,” Dominique Rizet, a commentator on police affairs, informed the TV community BFMTV. The French authorities haven’t prompt that Mr. Amra has any hyperlinks to terrorism.
The assault was captured on safety digicam footage and video filmed by bystanders that was later posted on X. At a time when France is making an attempt arduous to venture a picture of legislation and order forward of the Olympic Video games, the pictures of violence on the primary freeway from Paris to Normandy have been a blow. The assault got here simply days after the Olympic flame arrived to a lot fanfare in Marseille.
Jérôme Barbier, a resident of Incarville, France, who was on his approach to his beehive about 100 yards from the tollbooth, stated he heard capturing, however didn’t see it.
“It was a giant, massive capturing; it lasted for 5 minutes,” Mr. Barbier, 58, stated in a phone interview. “Then it calmed down for one to 2 minutes, after which there was an explosion. After which two extra gunshots.”
Mr. Barbier, who stated that he had labored for the gendarmerie — the power that oversees smaller cities and rural and suburban areas in France — within the Nineteen Eighties, stated he may inform it was “heavy fireplace.”
“It wasn’t a lightweight weapon; it was actually highly effective,” he stated.
Ms. Beccuau stated that the black Peugeot — which handed by means of the tollbooth a number of minutes earlier than the convoy and waited for it to reach — had been stolen. Two different vehicles, together with a white one, have been discovered burned in separate places a few dozen miles from the tollbooth. Each are believed to have been utilized by the assailants, she stated.
Jail guards are armed with handguns and outfitted with bulletproof vests throughout transfers, and the van transporting Mr. Amra was accompanied by one other jail administration automobile. However no armed police escort joined the convoy on the one-hour journey from a courthouse in Rouen to a jail in Évreux.
Ms. Beccuau stated that Mr. Amra, who had been transferred final month to that jail, was “very well-known” by the police. He has been convicted 13 instances since he was 15 years previous for offenses together with extortion and assault, in addition to a number of thefts.
A court docket in Évreux sentenced him final week to 18 months in jail for housebreaking. He’s additionally beneath investigation in Marseille in reference to a kidnapping and murder case and in Rouen in reference to an tried murder and extortion case.
Ms. Beccuau stated that the jail administration had determined a number of weeks in the past to extend the variety of officers securing Mr. Amra’s transfers. She didn’t say why, however famous that he was speculated to bear a disciplinary evaluation after jail workers members seen what seemed to be noticed marks on the bars of his cell.
Hugues Vigier, Mr. Amra’s lawyer, informed BFMTV that he was “utterly dumbfounded” by the assault and stated it didn’t “match the profile” of his consumer.
The assault occurred on the identical day {that a} Senate committee accomplished a report on rampant drug trafficking in France and advisable the creation of a French equal to the U.S. Drug Enforcement Administration. It stated that the federal government has not taken the measure “of the size of the risk.”
“The extent of drug trafficking offers us the sensation that there’s a relationship of sturdy versus weak, wherein the sturdy are the prison organizations and the weak is the state,” Jérôme Durain, a Socialist senator and one of many two authors of the report, informed Le Monde, a French every day newspaper.
Ms. Beccuau stated one of many guards who was killed was a 52-year-old father of twins with almost three many years of expertise within the jail administration. The opposite guard who was killed was 34 years previous and anticipating a baby together with his spouse.
France’s primary jail guard unions known as for a symbolic shutdown of the nation’s jails on Wednesday to honor their useless colleagues and to protest working circumstances.
“This was an assault of an unparalleled violence, within the brutality and cowardice of the killers,” Gabriel Attal, the prime minister, informed the Nationwide Meeting, which noticed a minute of silence on Tuesday. “We’ll spare no effort or means to search out them. We’ll observe them down — and they’re going to pay.”
Aurelien Breeden and Ségolène Le Stradic contributed reporting.