Three people were shot dead and three others injured on Friday shortly before noon in a lively district of the Xe arrondissement, in the center of Paris, by a man of French nationality who was arrested and placed in police custody, according to sources. consistent.
The facts occurred on rue d’Enghien, near a Kurdish cultural center, in a bustling shopping district that is particularly popular with the Kurdish community.
An investigation has been opened into the counts of murder, intentional homicide and aggravated violence. The investigations have for the time being entrusted to the criminal brigade of the Parisian judicial police, we learned from the Paris prosecutor’s office.
The provisional report shows three people dead and three injured, according to the Paris prosecutor’s office.
A man was arrested and taken into custody shortly following the incident. His motives were not immediately known.
According to two police sources, this man, a 69-year-old retired train conductor of French nationality, is known for two attempted homicides committed in 2016 and December 2021.
He is unknown to the files of territorial intelligence and the General Directorate of Internal Security (DGSI), the same source said.
Present at the scene, the mayor of the 10th arrondissement, Alexandra Cordebard, told the press that “the murderer, himself (wounded and) in relative urgency, was taken to the hospital”.
Traveling in the north of the country, Interior Minister Gérald Darmanin indicated on Twitter that he was returning to Paris “following the dramatic shooting that took place this morning”. “All my thoughts are with the loved ones of the victims,” he continued.
On the spot, the emotion was strong around the street partly cordoned off by a large police force.
Members of the Ahmed Kaya cultural center were in tears, hugging each other for consolation, an AFP journalist noted. Some, turning to the police, shouted “it’s starting once more, you’re not protecting us, they’re killing us”.
At the intersection of rue d’Enghien and rue d’Hauteville, stretchers were calmly brought to the scene of the shooting and a security perimeter was set up by the police, noted an AFP journalist. .
Present at the time of the attack, Selma Akkaya, a Kurdish journalist and activist, told AFP that “there are six people injured”, including “a famous Kurdish singer”. The perpetrator fired, according to her, “in the direction of a hairdressing salon”.
“Seven to eight shots in the street, it’s total panic, we stayed locked inside,” testified to AFP a shopkeeper from a neighboring building wishing to remain anonymous.
“We saw an old white gentleman come in and shoot in the Kurdish cultural center, then he went to the hairdressing salon next door”, at the corner with the Cour des Petites écuries. “We took refuge in the restaurant with the employees”, testified Romain, the deputy director of the restaurant Pouliche Paris, in the street, reached by telephone.
Rue d’Enghien and the neighborhood have many restaurants, bars and shops and its sidewalks, like those of the adjacent streets, are usually teeming with passers-by.
According to another witness, a resident of the neighborhood who was passing in the street and interviewed by AFP, “there were people in panic who were shouting at the police: ‘he’s there, he’s there, come on’, pointing to a living room hairstyle”.
“I saw police enter the living room where I saw two people on the ground, injured in their legs, I saw the blood,” he added, describing “people in shock and in panic” .
The Ahmet Kaya Center, so named in homage to the famous eponymous singer, is an association under the 1901 law whose objective is to “promote the gradual integration” of the Kurdish population living in Île-de-France.