French officer Arnaud Beltrame dies
A French policeman shot by an Islamist gunman when he swapped himself for a hostage in a supermarket siege has died, The Telegraph reports.
Arnaud Beltrame, a lieutenant-colonel in the gendarmerie, was hailed a hero after the attacker – who killed four people in a shooting spree – was shot dead by police.
Mr Beltrame was among the officers who rushed to the scene when the assailant stormed the store in the southwest town of Trèbes, firing on shoppers and staff before taking a hostage.
Gérard Collomb, the interior minister, announced early on Saturday that Mr Beltrame had passed away after he was reportedly hit by several bullets and one injury to the throat.
“Lieutenant Colonel Arnaud Beltrame has left us. France will never forget his heroism, his bravery, his sacrifice.”
Emmanuel Macron, the French President, called Mr Beltrame a hero.
“He saved lives and honoured his colleagues and his country,” President Macron said of the officer.
The gunman was identified as 26-year-old Redouane Lakdim, a petty criminal of Moroccan origin who claimed allegiance to the Islamic State of Iraq and the Levant (Isil).
Lakdim began his shooting spree in his home town, whose huge medieval castle makes it a tourist hotspot, around 10 am local time when he hijacked a car, shooting dead a passenger and seriously injuring its driver.
Then he fired at a group of CRS riot policemen who were jogging near the castle in Carcassonne and wounded one of them.
The attacker then drove off towards Trèbes, about five miles away, where he dumped the hijacked vehicle in the car park of a supermarket before storming into the Super U store, and shooting dead a shop worker and a customer.
It was then that Mr Beltrame, the 45-year-old lieutenant-colonel, offered to take the woman’s place and remained holed up with Lakdim while negotiations to end the standoff continued.
The officer “left his telephone on the table”, switched on, to allow police surrounding the building in to listen in, said Mr Collomb.
“When we heard shots the GIGN (an elite police force) intervened,” the minister said. A team of about a dozen officers entered the building and quickly shot dead the attacker. ‘We got him, we got him!,” one police officer shouted as he re-emerged from the building, according to an eyewitness account by a journalist from the local newspaper La Depeche.
An officer from the GIGN team was also hurt in the operation to neutralize the gunman.