The prime suspect arrested Wednesday afternoon after he is alleged to have driven a car into a group of soldiers in a Paris suburb, injuring six, has been identified — and remains in hospital after being shot by police.
Now named as 36-year-old Algerian migrant Hamou Bachir, French media reports the would-be killer who drove a rented BMW car into the soldiers as they stepped out of their barracks for a morning patrol was hit and wounded by five bullets during the course of his arrest on a motorway near Calais.
Ouest France reports a police source who said Bachir was not responsive and remains in hospital after having been seriously wounded in the hail of police gunfire. Consequently, no interrogations of the suspect have yet started.
One officer is understood to have been caught in the crossfire.
The paper also reports that whilst the attacker was not known to the state as a security risk, he was due to be deported to Algeria. Police have searched the suspect’s home in Yvelines, western Paris, and are following an investigation for ‘attempted murder of persons holding public authority in connection to a terrorist enterprise’.
The attempt to kill soldiers by driving the high powered BMW saloon into their patrol is just the latest attack against members of the French security forces this year. Days before this attack, a man drew a knife at the base of the Eiffel Tower and attempted to attack a soldier, shouting “Allahu Akbar”. He was arrested and readmitted to a psychiatric hospital.
In June, Breitbart London reported on the attempted bombing of a police convoy on the Champs-Elysees. A “known extremist” rammed a car packed with gas canisters into a police van, but the crude bomb failed to explode — the Islamic State follower was shot dead at the scene.
Again on the famous Champs-Elysees in April, a police officer was shot dead and two were injured after an Islamic State linked terrorist fired with a Kalashnikov into a stationary police vehicle.
Weeks before that attack, there was another, this time at Paris Orly airport in March. A man was shot dead by Sentinel troops after he grabbed a female soldier’s gun and took her hostage.
In February, soldiers deployed on Sentinel opened fire on an Egyptian national at the Louvre museum after he pulled a machete out of a rucksack and shouted “Allahu Akbar”. In addition to the knife, the man also had a quantity of paint in his rucksack, and it is reported he wanted to destroy artworks in revenge against the French state.