Incarville, France:
The attack on a prison van in northern France, which killed two guards and injured three, began at 10:57 am (08:57 GMT) and lasted just two minutes.
A black Peugeot SUV rammed the vehicle as it emerged, with its lights flashing, followed by a second prison service car, from the motorway toll gate in Incarville, just south of the Normandy capital Rouen.
Attackers dressed in black and armed with military weapons rushed out of the ramming car, which according to top Paris prosecutor Laure Beccuau had been “stolen a few days earlier.”
The vehicle “had stopped on the shoulder, waiting for the convoy” to pass the toll, Beccuau added, in a sign of an attack that had been meticulously planned.
Homens armados get the chef of the gang in France and get 2 penitentiary officers
Mohamed Amra, the hero of ”The Fly”, was sentenced to eternal punishment. An escort from this school is located near a children’s bicycle in Incarville.
2 agents morreram, 1 segue gravemente ferido. pic.twitter.com/dZ5ksBUR2r
— Submundo Criminal (@submundocrime) May 14, 2024
CCTV footage from the scene viewed by AFP shows the start of the attack on the prison van, although a passing truck obscures some details.
More attackers can be seen approaching from behind the convoy, with prosecutors saying they jumped from a white Audi car.
The prisoner, Mohamed Amra, was escorted that day by five guards – a ‘level three’ protection that is the second highest available for prisoner transport in France, reserved for those involved in terror or organized crime cases.
Guards were “of course armed,” Beccuau said, adding that “initial findings on the scene lead us to believe that some may have used their service weapons.”
But the team had only “a standard Sig Sauer (automatic pistol) against military weapons,” said Frederic Liakhoff, a representative of the FO union at the prison in the northern city of Caen where Amra was transported.
‘Very, very loud’
Using their “long weapons” (rifles), the attackers “shot several times at the two prison vehicles, killing two officers and wounding three others,” Beccuau said.
It was the first time since 1992 that a French prison guard was killed in the line of duty.
Meanwhile, the life of one of the three injured remains in danger.
There were “loud gunshots, very, very loud,” said Jerome Barbier, who was on his way to tend his beehives near the Incarville toll plaza when the attack occurred.
“Then there was a pause of one or two minutes, a big explosion, two gunshots and then it was all over,” the local resident told AFP.
One minute and forty seconds after the attack, surveillance video shows a man – apparently a guard – being forced into the prison van at gunpoint.
A little later a man wearing white sneakers climbs out.
He and five black-clad accomplices flee from an explosion.
Later Tuesday, two vehicles were found burned not far from the crash site, Beccuau said.
“The crime scene reveals the extreme violence committed by the criminals we are hunting,” she added after visiting the site.
“The determination of judges and investigators will rise to the challenge of this violence.”
Interior Minister Gerald Darmanin told broadcaster RTL that “significant” resources have been deployed to find the escaped Amra and the “gang that released him under appalling conditions.”
“More than 450 police officers and gendarmes” were in the field on Tuesday in the Eure department where the attack took place, he added, saying France had also appealed for “international cooperation”.
(This story has not been edited by NDTV staff and is auto-generated from a syndicated feed.)
