Police officer fatally shot near Paris as France mourns Charlie

Paris: A shooting on Thursday in a suburb south of Paris killed an unarmed policewoman and injured a traffic agent, the day after an attack at Charlie Hebdo magazine left 12 dead and prompted France to put its capital on highest terrorist alert.

A suspect in Thursday’s shooting is on the run, interior minister Bernard Cazeneuve told reporters at the site. It’s too soon to link today’s attack to Wednesday’s shootings at the satirical publication, French police said.

Paris is in lockdown as the police search for two men suspected of the attack on Charlie Hebdo, after the youngest suspect turned himself in last night at a police station in the Champagne-Ardenne region in eastern France. Seven people are being questioned, Cazeneuve said on Thursday.

At around 8 am local time today, the policewoman and a traffic agent responded to a traffic accident on a large avenue separating the suburbs of Malakoff and Montrouge, south of Paris, officials said. An assailant with a pistol and an automatic weapon shot them, police union official Emmanuel Cravello told journalists on site. The policewoman died a few hours later.

Some 20 heavily armed officers from France’s special intervention brigade, dressed in black, wearing helmets and bulletproof vests, are being deployed on-site.

A suspect — not the shooter — is being interrogated, Agence France-Presse reported, citing an unidentified person.

French municipal police, who work under the supervision of mayors, are unarmed. Officers of the national police force, run by the interior ministry, carry weapons. Bloomberg