Three dead after shots at Kurdish cultural center in Paris

Three people were killed by gunfire at a Kurdish cultural center in Paris on Friday. As prosecutor Laure Beccuau announced, the alleged attacker was known to the authorities and a racist background to the crime was being examined. Mayor Anne Hidalgo described the perpetrator as a “right-wing extremist”. Interior Minister Gérald Darmanin spoke of a lone perpetrator. According to media reports, the 69-year-old has attacked migrants several times.

Darmanin visited the crime scenes in the tenth arrondissement of Paris on Friday afternoon. There he announced stronger police protection for Kurdish institutions. “As it stands, he acted alone,” the minister said of the perpetrator. The exact motives are unclear. The 69-year-old was known to the authorities, “but not in the context of political extremism,” Darmanin added.

“The Kurdish community, and through it all Parisians, have been targeted by these killings, committed by a far-right activist,” Hidalgo wrote on Twitter on Friday. “The Kurds, wherever they live, must be able to live in peace and security. More than ever, Paris stands by them in these dark hours.”

The shots were fired on a small street in the 10th arrondissement. “We saw an old white man who went to the Kurdish center and fired there,” said the chef of a nearby restaurant. The man then fled to a neighboring hairdressing salon. “We took refuge with the staff at the restaurant,” he said.

Photo gallery: Three dead after shots at a Kurdish cultural center in Paris

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“I saw two police officers go into a hairdressing salon where two people were lying on the ground, their legs were injured,” said a local resident. “There were seven or eight shots, there is panic,” said an eyewitness to the AFP news agency.

The public prosecutor’s office is investigating for murder and serious violence. The crime brigade of the judicial police is initially responsible, not the terror prosecutor’s office, which initially went to the scene of the crime. A 69-year-old man was arrested and is in police custody.

The broadcaster France Info reported, citing police circles, that the man was known for two attempted killings. The newspaper “Le Parisien” wrote that the Frenchman attacked a migrant camp with a saber last year and injured several people there. The man only got out of prison in mid-December and was under judicial supervision.

The Council of Kurdish Society in Austria (FEYKOM) described the attack as “deeply shocking”. After all, it took place in a place where Kurds who had fled to Europe “believed they were safe”. It “cannot be ruled out” that the act was an “attack on Kurds organized by the Turkish state”. FEYKOM called for a demonstration in front of the French embassy in Vienna for Friday afternoon (5 p.m.) “to show solidarity with the Kurdish people”.

This article is continuously updated.

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