French Police Shoot Man Yelling ‘Allahu Akbar’ While Firing Shotgun Towards Them

A man wielding a shotgun in the centre of the French city of Saint-Quentin was shot and injured this week after firing toward police while yelling “Allahu akbar!” Investigators have not ruled out a possible terror motive.

The armed man, said to be 40 years old, was allegedly firing his shotgun in the centre of the city of Saint-Quentin at dawn on Thursday, as witnesses called police and informed them that the man was firing his shotgun without any identifiable target.

When police arrived on the scene, the man allegedly fired his weapon in their direction while yelling “Allahu akbar” but did not hit anyone, according to the local prosecutor’s office. The officers then shot back at the man and hit him in the shoulder, newspaper Le Parisien reports.

Despite being shot in the shoulder, police were still forced to deploy an electric pulse gun to finally subdue him.

Following the man’s arrest, he was immediately taken to a local hospital in Amiens with serious life-threatening injuries. The man is not said to be known to investigators or to French intelligence but the prosecutor’s office has stated that a possible terror motive had not yet been ruled out.

President of the Hauts-de-France region and former Saint-Quentin mayor Xavier Bertrand reacted to the incident on Twitter, saying: “I salute the action… of our police officers in Saint-Quentin who risked their lives to arrest this armed man.”

There have been several terror attacks and attempted terror attacks that have targeted French police in recent years.

In 2019, four people were killed in a radical Islamic terror attack on a French police station in Paris by a knife-wielding extremist who had been an IT worker in the police station. He was ultimately shot deal by officers.

Last April, another attack on a French police station in the Paris suburbs of Yvelines saw Tunisian illegal immigrant Jamel Gorchene stab a female officer to death before he was also shot dead by police.

Gorchene is said to have been radicalised and viewed videos glorifying martyrdom and jihad shortly before carrying out the attack, confirming suspicions of a terrorist motive.

Follow Chris Tomlinson on Twitter at @TomlinsonCJ or email at ctomlinson(at)breitbart.com.