Magnanville (France): A man claiming allegiance to the Islamic State group killed a French policeman and his partner, investigators said, in what authorities blasted as an “appalling terrorist act.”
The killer, 25-year-old LarossiAbballa (in pic), had pledged allegiance to the Islamic State group three weeks ago, Molins said.
President Francois Hollande held a top-level security meeting after the overnight attack, which took place as France was on high alert for the Euro 2016 football championships. Sources close to the investigation identified the suspect, who was killed in a dramatic police operation, as LarossiAbballa, 25.
They told AFP he had been previously sentenced for a role in a jihadist group with links to Pakistan.
He stabbed the policeman repeatedly outside his home in Magnanville, a northwestern suburb of Paris, before holing up inside with the policeman’s partner and the couple’s three- year-old son.
Loud detonations were heard at the scene as elite RAID police moved in following failed negotiations with the attacker. Officers found the woman’s body after they stormed the house, and her attacker was killed during the assault, interior ministry spokesman Pierre-Henry Brandet said.
The couple’s toddler son was “in shock but unharmed,” a prosecutor added, saying the boy was receiving medical attention.
The slain policeman was 42 years old and worked in nearby Les Mureaux. His partner was a local police official. Their identities have been withheld. He had a “hit list” of VIPs, police and rappers, the Paris prosecutor said.
Police also found three telephones, three knives “and in particular a bloodied knife lying on the table,”
Francois Molins told a news conference. A police source said two people had been detained in connection with the attack, and Molins confirmed that a third person had also been taken into custody as part of the investigation into Monday’s double murder.AFP
