French police officers patrol in the streets front of flowers to pay respects of the victims following an attack killing three persons and wounding at least 13, in Strasbourg, eastern France, Thursday,... (Associated Press) 
 
 French police officers patrol in the streets front of flowers to pay respects of the victims following an attack killing three persons and wounding at least 13, in Strasbourg, eastern France, Thursday, Dec. 13, 2018. Police union officials identified the suspected assailant as Frenchman Cherif Chekatt,... (Associated Press) 
 
 STRASBOURG, France (AP) — The man authorities say killed three people near a Christmas market in Strasbourg died Tuesday in a shootout with police at the end of two-day manhunt, French authorities said. 
 
 Paris prosecutor's office, which handles terror cases in France, formally identified the man killed in the eastern French city as 29-year-old Cherif Chekatt, a Strasbourg-born man with a long history of convictions for various crimes, including robberies. Chekatt also had been on a watch list of potential extremists. 
 
 The news came a couple of hours after Interior Minister Christophe Castaner said a man believed to be Chekatt had been gunned down during a police operation in the city's Neudorf neighborhood. 
 
 Castaner said the suspect opened fire on police Thursday night when officials tried to arrest him. 
 
 "The moment they tried to arrest him, he turned around and opened fired. They replied," Castaner said. 
 
 A local police official, who spoke on condition of anonymity because he was not authorized to speak publicly, said the man who shot at police was armed with a pistol and a knife. 
 
 Strasbourg mayor Roland Ries said police acted on a top from a woman. Local police officer Emmanuel Georg told BFM TV station that three police officers patrolling the neighborhood tried to intercept a suspect corresponding to Chekatt's description as he was about to enter a building. 
 
 "He opened fired, they responded and managed to shoot him down," Georg said. 
 
 A witness to the shootout said he heard shots and rushed to the window to see what was happening. He closed the shutters when he spotted the cornered suspect across the street. 
 
 "I was very afraid for my children, I told them to go away, and I went to the side," Cem Akcakaya told The Associated Press. 
 
 After it was over, he said he saw the man motionless on his back on the pavement, his left arm askew. 
 
 Chekatt is accused of killing three people and wounding 13 on Tuesday night. Castaner said earlier Thursday that three of the injured had been released from hospital and three others were fighting for their lives. 
 
 More than 700 officers were deployed to find Chekatt, government spokesman Benjamin Griveaux told CNews television. French authorities said Chekatt had 27 criminal convictions, receiving the first at age 13. 
 
 The SITE Intelligence Group, which monitors extremist activity online, said the Islamic State group's Amaq news agency was claiming the gunman as a "soldier" of the group, although IS claims of responsibility have often been considered opportunistic in the past. 
 
 Security forces, including the elite Raid squad, spent hours searching in the Neudorf neighborhood on Thursday based on "supposition only" that Chekatt could have been hiding in a building nearby two days after the attack, a French police official said. Chekatt grew up in Neudorf. 
 
 Chekatt allegedly shouted "God is great!" in Arabic and sprayed gunfire from a security zone near the Christmas market Tuesday evening. Authorities said he was wounded during an exchange of fire with security forces and a taxi driver dropped him off in Neudorf after he escaped. 
 
 So far, five people have been arrested and remanded in custody in connection with the investigation, including Chekatt's parents and two of his brothers. 
 
 The Paris prosecutor's office said the fifth, who was arrested Thursday at an undisclosed location, was a member of Chekatt's "entourage" but not a family member. 
 
 France has raised its three-stage threat index to the highest level since the attack and deployed 1,800 additional soldiers across the country to help patrol streets and secure crowded events. 
 
 Residents of Strasbourg's Neudorf neighborhood expressed relief. 
 
 "Everybody's quite happy that the killer has been finally shot. I think now, the city and life can keep going on in Strasbourg," resident Pierre Plasse said. 
 
 The people who died in the attack included a Thai tourist, 45-year-old Anupong Suebsamarn, according to the Thai Foreign Ministry. Five of the wounded were in serious condition, the prefecture of the Strasbourg region said. 
 
 French President Emmanuel Macron was in Brussels on Thursday for a European Union summit. EU leaders held a minute of silence for the latest victims of a mass shooting in France. 
 
 Hundreds of people gathered in Strasbourg's 500-year-old cathedral Thursday evening to mourn and seek comfort. 
 
 "Evil does not prevail," Archbishop Luc Ravel said. "And the message of Christmas has not been contradicted but rather confirmed by Tuesday's dramatic night: Evil and good are both there, but in the end the good will have last word." 
 
 Strasbourg's usually busy streets were eerily empty Thursday morning, with a heavy police and military presence. Some lit candles and brought flowers to a makeshift memorial at the site of the attack. 
 
 "You can feel a very heavy atmosphere due all these events," said resident Lucille Romance. "People are in a state of shock and are avoiding getting out of their house." 
 
 ___ 
 
 Petrequin and Ganley reported from Paris. Jean-Francois Badias in Strasbourg, Sylvie Corbet, Deborah Gouffran, Elena Becatoros and Elaine Ganley in Paris, Colleen Barry in Milan, Italy, Raf Casert and Angela Charlton in Brussels, Belgium, contributed to this story. ||||| The 29-year-old, who authorities say was radicalised in prison, is still on the run 
 
 French and German police were continuing to hunt on Wednesday night for the gunman who killed three people and injured 13 others in an attack on Strasbourg’s Christmas market. 
 
 Suspect Chérif Chekatt is a hardened criminal who was on France’s national security list as a potential terror threat, the county’s authorities have admitted. 
 
 Witnesses said the man shouted “Allahu Akbar” as he shot into the crowds and slashed at passersby with a knife. 
 
 Two victims died at the scene and a third was said to have been left “brain dead”. Six people were critically injured. 
 
 The public prosecutor Rémy Heitz told journalists the attack was being investigated as terrorism-linked. 
 
 Some 720 members of the French security forces were today searching for Chekatt, a 29-year-old born in Strasbourg. 
 
 German federal police also confirmed they were searching for Chekatt and his brother in case they have crossed the border into Germany. At the German-French border in Kehl all cars leaving France are being controlled by the German police, and there are controls at three other border points. 
 
 German authorities rejected criticism of their extradition of Chekatt, who had previous convictions in Germany, saying his sentence had been served. According to records in Germany, Chekatt was convicted of crimes no less than 27 times in Germany, France and Switzerland. 
 
 Before the attack on Tuesday, he gave police the slip when they went to arrest him in connection with an attempted murder. He was not home, but a stun grenade, a rifle and ammunition along with four knives, two of them hunting knives, were found in a search of his apartment. 
 
 When the suspect began shooting in the city centre just before 8pm on Tuesday, police quickly identified him as the same man they had been looking to arrest. 
 
 Laurent Nuñez, the secretary of state for the interior ministry, said the failed arrest might be one reason for the attack. 
 
 Heitz said the man walked through several streets “at the heart of the Christmas market” shortly before 8pm. “All along this route he opened fire several times with a handgun and used a knife with which he seriously injured and killed. 
 
 “Faced with four soldiers from Opération Sentinelle, he fired at them and was targeted back and was injured in the arm.” Opération Sentinelle is a nationwide security operation established after a series of terrorist attacks in Paris in 2015. 
 
 The gunman then took a 10-minute taxi to the Neudorf district south-east of the centre. 
 
 “The taxi driver said the individual asked him to take him to this district without giving an address, saying he would give him directions,” Heitz said. “The taxi driver added he saw the suspect in possession of a handgun and that he was injured. To explain his injuries, the individual told of what he had done in the centre of Strasbourg by saying he had shot at soldiers and killed 10 people. 
 
 “The taxi driver said the individual made statements justifying what he claimed he had done.” 
 
 Chekatt, getting out of the taxi, came into contact with police and there was another exchange of fire. 
 
 One of those killed was Anupong Suebsamarn, a 45-year-old Thai tourist who had been travelling with his wife. The other victim was not immediately named. 
 
 Among those injured was an Italian journalist, Antonio Megalizzi, 28, who was in a coma and fighting for his life after being “hit in the head by a bullet” fired by the attacker, his girlfriend’s father Danilo Moresco told Italian media. 
 
 Heitz said the suspect had been convicted 27 times, mostly for acts of “theft and violence” committed in France, Germany and Switzerland and had been jailed many times. He drew the attention of France’s security services for his “radicalisation and proselytising attitude” while jailed in 2015 and had been under surveillance. 
 
 Facebook Twitter Pinterest Image of suspect Chérif Chekatt released by French police. Photograph: AP 
 
 He was on France’s “Fiche S”, a national register of those considered a potential risk to national security. The list includes suspected Islamist extremists but also major criminals, political militants and anarchists. 
 
 Strasbourg Christmas market shooting: suspect on the run after three killed Read more 
 
 Castaner, in the early hours of Wednesday, announced France was raising its security level to the highest alert. This means imposing border controls with neighbouring Germany where officials admitted the suspect could have fled. 
 
 Police arrested and detained four people – understood to be Chekatt’s mother, father and brothers – after raiding addresses linked to the suspect overnight. After the shootings, police cut off major roads into and out of the city. 
 
 Strasbourg’s Christmas market, which started in 1570, is one of France’s most popular seasonal events. The Grande Île where the market is held is surrounded by water, with the River Ill on one side and the Canal du Faux-Rempart on the other, and is accessible only by bridges. 
 
 In the hours after the attack – with the gunman still on the loose – the city centre of Strasbourg had been put on lockdown. 
 
 In the city centre, Thibault, 21, a business and marketing student, was outside with a group of friends having a cigarette near a bar in the cathedral area at about 8pm when the attack started. “There was a man who had seen the gunman and he came running at us, shouting to get inside,” he said. “We went up to the second floor of the bar and dozens of us hid there. It was confusing and scary. The mood here now is morose. When you think about it, perhaps it isn’t that surprising. We knew this city could one day be a target.” 
 
 Since the Paris terrorist attacks in 2015, the event has been held under high security. Access to the area is controlled and visitors’ bags are searched. Vehicles have been banned from the area. 
 
 In 2016, a truck was deliberately driven into a Christmas market in Berlin, killing 12 people and injuring 56 others. The perpetrator, Anis Amri, a Tunisian who had failed to gain asylum in Germany, was killed four days later in a shootout with police near Milan in Italy. 
 
 The attack comes during a period of intense tension across France after four weeks of civil unrest by anti-government protesters from the gilets jaunes movement. 
 
 Additional reporting by Angela Giuffrida and Kate Connolly
– The man authorities say killed three people near a Christmas market in Strasbourg died Thursday in a shootout with police at the end of two-day manhunt, French authorities said. Paris prosecutor's office, which handles terror cases in France, formally identified the man killed in the eastern French city as 29-year-old Cherif Chekatt, a Strasbourg-born man with a long history of convictions for various crimes, including robberies. Chekatt also had been on a watch list of potential extremists, the AP reports. The news came a couple of hours after Interior Minister Christophe Castaner said a man believed to be Chekatt had been gunned down during a police operation in the city's Neudorf neighborhood. Castaner said the suspect opened fire on police Thursday night when officials tried to arrest him. Strasbourg mayor Roland Ries said police acted on a tip from a woman. Chekatt is accused of killing three people and wounding 13 on Tuesday night. Castaner said earlier Thursday that three of the injured had been released from the hospital and three others were fighting for their lives. More than 700 officers were deployed to find Chekatt, government spokesman Benjamin Griveaux told CNews television. French authorities said Chekatt had 27 criminal convictions, receiving the first at age 13. The SITE Intelligence Group, which monitors extremist activity online, said the Islamic State group's Amaq news agency was claiming the gunman as a "soldier" of the group, although ISIS' claims of responsibility have often been considered opportunistic in the past. (Click for more on the five people arrested in connection with the attack investigation.)