French authorities have launched a manhunt for a suspected Islamic terrorist who sprayed gunfire near the famous Christmas market in the eastern city of Strasbourg, killing three and wounding at least 12.
The government raised the security alert level and French Interior Minister Christophe Castaner on Wednesday said 350 security agents were in pursuit of the gunman, identified by police as Strasbourg-born Cherif Chekatt, 29, who fled the scene.
"He fought twice with our security forces," Castaner told a news conference held in the city.
Chekatt has a police record in France and neighboring Germany and had been put on a terror watchlist by intelligence services.
While authorities urged people in the area to stay inside, Strasbourg Mayor Roland Ries told local media Wednesday that "life must go on" so that the city doesn't cede to a "terrorist who is trying to disrupt our way of life."
The European Parliament, which is sitting in Strasbourg this week, was put on lockdown.
The attack began at about 8 p.m. as stallholders prepared to close down and the city's restaurants filled up. Bystanders were swiftly ushered into nearby shops.
European Parliament lawmaker Emmanuel Maurel said he had heard the shots.
"From my hotel window I saw passersby dragging someone who was injured and onlookers panicking," he tweeted. "Soldiers and police have cordoned off the area. We're being told to stay in the hotel."
A source close to the operation said Chekatt had been cornered and shots had been fired. But an hour or so later, a police source said he was still on the run. Other reports said he was believed to have fled in a hijacked taxi after being wounded in an exchange of gunfire with soldiers.
Strasbourg lies on the west bank of the Rhine River. On the opposite side, German police tightened border controls, officials said.
No group immediately claimed responsibility for the attack, but the U.S.-based Site intelligence group, which monitors jihadist websites, said Islamic State supporters were celebrating.
Sources familiar with the police operation said the suspect's home had been raided earlier in the day in connection with a robbery during the summer, but he was not found there.
Some 26,000 individuals suspected of posing a security risk to France are on the "S File" watchlist, of whom about 10,000 are believed to have been radicalized, sometimes in fundamentalist Salafist Muslim mosques, online or abroad.
European security agencies have feared for some time that Islamist terrorists who left Europe to fight for Islamic State in Syria and Iraq would return after the jihadist group's defeat, with the skills and motivation to carry out attacks at home.
Secular France has been grappling with how to respond to both homegrown jihadists and foreign militants following attacks in Paris, Nice, Marseille and beyond since 2015.
In 2016, a truck plowed into a Bastille Day crowd in Nice, killing more than 80 people, while in November 2015, coordinated Islamist terrorist attacks on the Bataclan concert hall and other sites in Paris claimed about 130 lives. There have also been attacks in Paris on a policeman on the Champs-Élysées avenue, the satirical weekly Charlie Hebdo and a kosher store.
Almost exactly two years ago, a Tunisian Islamist rammed a hijacked truck into a Christmas market in central Berlin, killing 11 people as well as the driver.
