Emmanuel Macron has condemned racism in French society after a gunman opened fire from a car west of Paris on Friday, killing one person, wounding a 12-year-old girl and injuring four others in what the president called a “racist terrorist attack”. Macron arrived at the scene of the drive-by shooting in Trappes, a town west of Paris, on Friday night, saying he was deeply saddened by what he called the “premeditated” attack. The 12-year-old girl, who was shot eight times, is being treated in hospital.
He said the gunman had targeted people because of the colour of their skin. The president said racism had often become part of the “ambient discourse in France” and created “an atmosphere”. He said: “Don’t let this terrorist attack divide us.” He called for “respect and unity”, saying many French people would be scared and thinking “this could happen to me”.
Ali Rabeh, the leftwing mayor of Trappes, said that the gunman had set out by car on Friday morning “firing at random, wanting to cause a bloodbath” as he drove through the town and neighbouring La Verrière. The mayor called it “objectively a racist attack, probably Islamophobic”. Rabeh, whose family has Moroccan roots, said: “The people targeted today could just as easily have been my mother, my brothers or my sisters-in-law.
Her crime was probably being of colour,” he added. He called for a collective condemnation of rhetoric that “ideologically arms those capable of carrying out such acts”. Anti-terrorism prosecutors are investigating whether the gunman targeted the “real or supposed race, ethnicity, nationality or religion” of the victims.
The 39-year-old suspect, who was stopped by police in his car, was named by France’s anti-terrorism prosecutor as Kevin T. He had driven through the towns of Trappes and La Verrière in Yvelines, west of Paris, at about 10.30am on Friday. Over the course of 15 minutes, he repeatedly fired an automatic weapon, first at a petrol station, then a medical centre and a children’s playground.
The French public broadcaster reported that he shot dead a young black man, then targeted a woman wearing a headscarf, before shooting the 12-year-old girl, who was being treated for her eight gunshot wounds at a children’s hospital on Friday night. The prosecutor said in a statement on Friday night that the medical status of the five wounded victims was not stable. Rabeh said the man killed was “of African origin” and that another of the wounded was “of north African origin”.
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