Suspect arrested after car rams troops in Paris suburb

PARIS - Reuters

French police shot and arrested a suspect in a dramatic motorway chase yesterday after a car smashed into soldiers outside a barracks in a Paris suburb, injuring six.

The suspected terror attack is the latest in a string of assaults that have hit France since January 2015, claiming more than 230 lives.

The servicemen were hit by a BMW which drove down a quiet street in the upmarket western Paris suburb of Levallois-Perret at around 8:00 am local time

It accelerated as it neared the troops, rammed into them and then sped away.

“I heard a huge crash which I thought was the sound of scaffolding being put up,” Thierry Chappe, a resident in a building opposite the crime scene, told AFP.

Police later gave chase to the vehicle on a motorway north of Paris, and shot and wounded the suspect, a man aged in his late 30s who was also arrested, sources involved in the manhunt said, speaking on condition of anonymity.

Interior Minister Gerard Collomb described the act as “deliberate” and carried out by a “man on his own.”

Collomb said the forces had been attacked on six different occasions since 2015.