France fears serial killer on loose after Paris murder © Reuters/Charles Platiau French authorities have said they fear a serial killer is on the loose after a gunman shot dead a woman in a Paris suburb, using a weapon employed in three other killings in the same area within the last five months. "This series of killings deserves our maximum attention and we are putting all our resources into this affair," the Interior Minister Claude Gueant told reporters. The latest shooting took place on Thursday when a gunman on a motorbike struck. In each of the four shootings, the first of which was in November, a lone gunman used the same 7.65 mm calibre semi-automatic pistol, prosecutors said. "It was a pistol, a semi-automatic pistol," said Marie-Suzanne Le Queau, public prosecutor in Evry, in the southern suburbs of Paris. This element alone is not enough to affirm at this stage that it is all part of the same affair. There were obvious similarities in the way the latest three killings were carried out in February, March and April, but no clear link to the first killing in November, she added.