A French policeman who offered himself as a hostage to help end what French President Emmanuel Macron branded an “Islamist terrorist attack” yesterday died of his wounds, becoming the fourth victim of the shooting spree and supermarket siege.
Lieutenant Colonel Arnaud Beltrame, 45, was among a group of officers who on Friday rushed to the scene in the town of Trebes in southwest France after the attacker, who claimed allegiance to the Islamic State group, stormed a supermarket and fired at shoppers and staff.
Beltrame offered to take the place of a woman who was being held as the attacker’s final hostage, French Minister of the Interior Gerard Collomb said.
Photo: AFP
The officer was shot and stabbed before counterterrorism police moved in to kill the attacker and end the siege.
Macron led tributes to Beltrame, saying that he had “died a hero” and deserved “the respect and admiration of the whole nation.”
The French National Gendarmerie said its flags would fly at half-mast yesterday in tribute to the slain officer, while a white rose hung on the door of his base in Carcassonne in southern France.
With the death of Beltrame, the assailant, identified as 25-year-old Radouane Lakdim, killed a total of four people in Trebes and the nearby medieval town of Carcassonne in France’s first major extremist attack since October last year.
The Islamic State group claimed the attack was in response to its call to target Western enemies — as is customary when an assailant has pledged allegiance to the extremists.
The shootings came as France remains on high alert following a string of deadly attacks that have killed more than 240 people since 2015.
Moroccan-born French national Lakdim had been monitored as a potential extremist, which will likely raise difficult questions for Macron’s government as to how he slipped through the net.
Lakdim had convictions for carrying a banned weapon and for drug use, and had spent a month in jail in 2016, top French anti-terror prosecutor Francois Molins said.
“He had been on a watch list for his radicalization and links to the Salafist movement,” Molins told reporters in Carcassonne on Friday, adding that Lakdim had been tracked for his online contacts with extremists.
Lakdim’s partner, who lived with him in Carcassonne, was detained on Friday, Molins said.
A legal source said a friend of Lakdim’s was also taken into custody yesterday.
Lakdim started his rampage in Carcassonne at about 10:30am, hijacking a car and shooting the two people inside.
The passenger was killed, while the driver remains in a critical condition.
Lakdim then shot and wounded a policeman, who was out jogging with his colleagues, before driving to nearby Trebes, bursting into a Super U supermarket and shooting a customer and an employee dead.
“The attacker entered the store shouting Allahu Akbar [God is great] and saying that he was a soldier of the Islamic State, ready to die for Syria,” Molins said.
Lakdim reportedly demanded the release of certain prisoners — notably, according to a security source, Saleh Abdeslam, the prime suspect in the November 2015 Paris terror attacks.
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