French police have launched an operation in the Strasbourg neighborhood where a gunman killed three people late Tuesday at a Christmas market, according to multiple media reports.
Reports from AFP, Reuters and The Associated Press, citing on-scene journalists and an unnamed police official, said armed police cordoned off an area in the Neudorf district, a short drive from where the suspect exchanged gunfire with police.
The police official told AP that members of the elite RAID squad were also on the scene. They, along with other police officers, fanned out along one street, with some pointing their guns on houses in front of them.
It was not immediately clear if they located suspected shooter Cherif Chekkat or were executing a separate raid linked to the attack.
More than 700 police have been searching for Chekkat since the shooting, which also injured 13 people.
Authorities said the 29-year-old Chekatt was on a watch list of suspected extremists. The gunman’s motive is unknown.
France raised its security threat level to “emergency attack,” its highest level, adding tighter border controls and boosting security at other Christmas markets.
Germany’s Interior Ministry spokeswoman Eleonore Petermann said the suspect was convicted in Germany in 2016 and reportedly was deported to France last year.
Petermann said the German government has increased controls on its borders in response to the attack but did not raise the threat level in the country.
Strasbourg is headquarters of the European Parliament. The building was put on temporary lockdown after the shooting.
The market is set up around the Strasbourg cathedral and attracts hundreds of thousands of tourists every year. Authorities say they have long been on the alert for an attack on the market since a foiled terror plot in Strasbourg on New Year’s Eve in 1999.
France is no stranger to extremist attacks. Islamic State claimed responsibility for two nights of bombings and shootings in Paris in November 2015, killing 130, months after a deadly shooting at a French satirical magazine, and hostage-taking in a kosher supermarket.
A 2016 terrorist truck attack in Nice left 86 people dead.
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