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Police Commander and Companion Are Killed in Attack Outside Paris ISIS Claims Responsibility for Killing of French Police Officer
(35 minutes later)
PARIS — A senior French police officer and his female companion were attacked and killed by a knife-wielding man in a distant suburb of Paris, officials said on Monday. The attacker was also killed in the ensuing confrontation with the police, while a boy, 3, was rescued from the scene. PARIS — A police captain and his companion were fatally stabbed at their home in a small town northwest of Paris on Monday evening, and within hours the Islamic State claimed responsibility for the murders.
The police commander was stabbed to death outside his home in Magnanville, about 35 miles west of Paris, an Interior Ministry spokesman, Pierre-Henry Brandet, said at the scene. The attacker then retreated indoors before police commandos stormed the residence. The woman and the attacker were found dead; the boy was found safe. The police captain, who was not otherwise identified, was outside his home in Magnanville when he was stabbed by an unidentified assailant, who appeared to have then entered the house and took the captain’s companion and small son hostage, according to a statement published on the website of the French Interior Ministry.
“The toll is a heavy one,” Mr. Brandet told reporters, his voice shaking with emotion. Members of an elite French police unit arrived and raided the home. They fatally shot the attacker, found the woman dead and rescued the boy. The statement added that the woman was an employee of the ministry.
A prosecutor, Vincent Lesclous, who said he knew the dead police commander, told reporters that the boy had been found “shocked but unharmed.” President François Hollande, who called the killing “a cowardly murder” in a statement issued late Monday, said he would be briefed on the case early Tuesday and that the interior minister, Bernard Cazeneuve, would go to Magnanville on Tuesday morning.
Mr. Lesclous added that “the investigation is beginning” and that the authorities had no solid leads on the motivation behind the attack. Magnanville is about 35 miles from central Paris.
The identity of the assailant was not immediately clear. With the 2016 EURO Soccer tournament underway in France and multiple warnings of the possibility of terrorist attacks during the monthlong event, the authorities have been on alert for attacks. Extraordinary measures have been put in place to ensure that the crowds of visitors at the soccer matches will be safe.
Although officials said the attacker was killed by police officers when they stormed the residence, it was unclear how the woman was killed, or what the couple’s relation was to the rescued child. Much of the public focus has been on avoiding a repeat of the sort of attacks that killed 130 people in and near Paris on Nov. 13. In that case, a network of former Islamic State fighters from Belgium and France staged the attacks along with a few people who expressed loyalty to the extremist group.
In a statement, Bernard Cazeneuve, the French interior minister, identified the male victim as a police commander and said that his female companion also worked for the Interior Ministry. However, the other risk and perhaps the one that is harder to protect against are attacks staged by so-called lone wolves, people who act alone, sometimes with the encouragement of the Islamic State and sometimes not. They can strike almost anywhere and are harder for the authorities to detect. The Islamic State has called on people loyal to them, regardless of whether they have gone to Syria or Iraq to fight, to stage such attacks.
Mr. Cazeneuve said the investigation would help determine the circumstances of “this tragedy that has shocked all of France.” A similar case took place in June 2015 when Yassine Salhi, an employee at a small trucking company, beheaded his boss and attempted to set off an explosion at an American-owned chemical and gas factory near Lyon. Mr. Salhi appears to have had a friend who had gone to Syria to join the Islamic State and he sent pictures of the beheading to him.
In December, Mr. Salhi killed himself in prison while awaiting trial.
The beheading, like the stabbing on Monday evening, took place during Ramadan, a holy period of fasting for Muslims.