French police have shot and arrested a man suspected of ramming a car into a group of French soldiers Wednesday in a suburb of Paris, injuring six of them in what authorities say was a deliberate attack.
Sources who requested anonymity said the suspect was apprehended north of Paris in the car that was used in the attack.
An unnamed legal source said the man who was detained “is suspected to be the culprit” of the attack.
“He was driving the vehicle we were looking for and tried to flee,” prompting police to shoot the suspect, the legal source said.
The incident happened as the soldiers left their barracks in Levallois-Perret to go on patrol.
Mayor Patrick Balkany said “without a doubt” the attack was intentional. “The vehicle did not stop,” Balkany said. “It hurtled at them … it accelerated rapidly.”
Authorities were searching for the driver of the car, while the Paris prosecutor’s office said it has opened a counterterrorism investigation.
The attack follows a series of other Islamic State-inspired strikes on soldiers and police, large numbers of whom have been deployed in France in response to IS calls for attacks against France and other countries that have bombed IS positions in Iraq and Syria.
All told, more than 230 people, mainly civilians, have been killed in attacks inspired by the militant group over the past two years, including two 2015 attacks in Paris and another in the coastal city of Nice in mid-2016.
The soldiers injured in Wednesday’s attack were assigned to the 35th infantry regiment, which was created to guard against popular French attractions following the string of fatal attacks.
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