Police Scour Paris After Shooting at Newspaper Headquarters
|
Version 0 of 1. PARIS — Police officers fanned out in the French capital on Monday in search of the man responsible for a shooting at a newspaper headquarters that left one man gravely wounded and the city on edge. In what may be related episodes, a man opened fire later in the morning outside the headquarters of a major bank and there were reports that an armed individual in the same area had stopped a car and forced its driver to drive him to the Champs-Élysées. Surveillance footage from the newspaper shooting indicated that the same man who opened fire there had brandished a shotgun on Friday at the headquarters of BFMTV, a Paris-based television news channel, threatening a senior editor before fleeing, the French news media reported. Shortly after 10 a.m. on Monday, the gunman went through the front entrance of Libération, a left-leaning national daily, fired two blasts from a shotgun and fled, according to witnesses. A 27-year-old photographer’s assistant was critically wounded in the stomach and chest, the newspaper reported on its website. The victim was taken to a nearby hospital. The police were seeking an overweight man of perhaps 40 with a shaved head, Libération said. Shortly after the shooting at Libération, a man fired three blasts from a shotgun outside the high-rise headquarters of the bank Société Générale, in the La Défense business district just west of Paris, according to witnesses and the bank. No injuries were reported. A security official at the bank described the gunman as being dressed in a “big overcoat,” Agence France-Presse reported. Shortly after the shooting at the bank, an armed man stopped a car nearby and ordered the driver to take him to the Champs-Élysées, according to police officers who spoke to the French news media on the condition of anonymity. A police helicopter hovered over the Champs-Élysées in the early afternoon as officers scanned the sidewalks, reporters on hand said. Media reports suggested that the police had lost the man’s trail when he went into a subway station. Asked during a news conference about a possible link between the episodes, Interior Minister Manuel Valls declined to comment. Shootings in the French capital are exceptionally rare, and the Paris-based news media provided minute-by-minute updates on the manhunt. Police guards had been placed at the entrances to news media headquarters throughout the city, Mr. Valls said. Various politicians, meanwhile, spoke of the necessity of a free press. “This unqualifiable and particularly grave act constitutes a direct attack on one of the pillars of our democracy: press freedom,” Prime Minister Jean-Marc Ayrault said in a written statement. |