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PARIS — A gunman firing from a vehicle in a Paris suburb Friday killed one person and wounded several others, including a 12-year-old girl, in what French authorities suspect may have been a racially motivated attack.
France’s National Anti-Terrorism Prosecutor’s office took charge of the case and Interior minister Laurent Nuñez spoke of a “terrorist crime.”
A suspect was arrested and taken into police custody, police said. Nuñez said the shootings happened at three separate locations in the towns of Trappes and La Verrière, near Paris.
“A deadly rampage took place this morning,” he told reporters in Trappes. According to Nuñez, the attacker shot dead one person and wounded five others, three of them very seriously, with their lives in danger.
Nuñez said the attack lasted just under 15 minutes and was considered a “terrorist crime” by prosecutors, with a possible racist motive.
He praised the five officers from the anti-crime brigade who stopped the suspect.
“I commend them for their swift response,” he said.
Aurore Bergé, the minister for gender equality and fight against discriminations, said the 12-year-old girl was very seriously injured.
“If a racist motive is established, I hope that the whole nation will stand alongside the residents of Trappes, La Verrière, and the victims. We cannot tolerate even the slightest racist remark in the French Republic,” she said.
Asked about reports that the suspect’s home had been booby-trapped with gas cylinders, Nuñez said: “We have heard those reports. The investigation will establish the facts.”
Nuñez said the suspect fired “what appears to have been a military-grade weapon, or at least an automatic weapon.”
Trappes Mayor Ali Rabeh said the gunman appeared to have fired relatively randomly, targeting passersby at several locations including a playground.
“This is probably one of the first attempted mass killings motivated by Islamophobia and racism,” he told reporters. ”This was a terrorist attack with racist, likely Islamophobic, overtones.”
Rabeh previously said the person killed was of African origin, while one of those critically wounded was of North African origin.
France’s National Anti-Terrorism Prosecutor’s office said it opened a criminal investigation into several offenses, including “murder in connection with a terrorist enterprise with the aggravating circumstance that the act was committed on account of the victim’s actual or perceived membership of a particular race, ethnic group, nationality or religion.”
The shooting happened as France braces for another day of protests against the high cost of living on Saturday, with major museums closing their doors and the government deploying a significantly larger security presence to prevent a repeat of last week’s violent unrest which shocked the country.