STRASBOURG, France -- The Latest on the attack on a Christmas market in Strasbourg, France (all times local):

The office of the Paris prosecutor, which handles terrorism cases in France, says a man killed in Strasbourg in a shootout with police has been identified as the main suspect in a Christmas market attack that killed three people.

The man was identified as Charif Chekatt, a 29-year-old whom police had been searching for since Tuesday night's attack near Strasbourg's Christmas market, which also left 13 people wounded.

Earlier, Interior Minister Christophe Castaner had said police had been attempting to arrest a man fitting the suspect's description when the man turned around and opened fire on them. Police responded, killing the shooter.

The SITE Intelligence Group, which monitors extremist activity online, says the Islamic State group's Amaq news agency is claiming the gunman who opened fire near a Christmas market in Strasbourg as a "soldier" of the group.

The claim was published shortly after news emerged of a shootout with French police in Strasbourg Thursday night in which a man believed to be the suspect was killed. IS claims of responsibility have often been considered opportunistic in the past.

French police had been searching for 29-year-old Charif Chekatt, the suspected shooter during the Tuesday night that killed three people and wounded 13.

France's interior minister says the prosecutor in charge of terror-related investigations is heading to the scene of a police shootout in Strasbourg to confirm if a man killed by officers is the suspect in the attack near the city's Christmas market.

Christophe Castaner said from Strasbourg late Thursday that police spotted an individual who matched the description of 29-year-old Cherif Chekatt. He has been the focus of a massive manhunt since Tuesday's attack.

Castaner says the moment they tried to arrest the man they spotted in the Neudorf neighbourhood, he started shooting. The minister says police returned fire, killing the man.

Neudorf is where the suspect last was seen after the Tuesday attack that killed three people.

Authorities say Chekatt was born in Strasbourg and appeared on a watch list of potential extremists.

A top French official says a suspect has been killed in a shootout with police in Strasbourg, but hasn't been confirmed as the alleged gunman who killed three people near a Christmas market on Tuesday.

The official, who could not be named because the operation was ongoing, said the suspect opened fire on police Thursday night, and police responded, killing him.

A local police official, who also spoke on condition of anonymity for the same reason, said the man who opened fire was armed with a pistol and a knife.

The shooting occurred in the Neudorf neighbourhood, where police conducted a search earlier Thursday for Cherif Chekatt, a 29-year-old born in Strasbourg who police named as the suspected Christmas market gunman.

The Paris prosecutor's office says a fifth person has been arrested and placed in custody in connection with the investigation into Tuesday's shooting near Strasbourg's Christmas market.

The office said the man is a member of the "entourage" of main suspect Cherif Chekatt, 29, but not a family member. He was placed in custody on Thursday morning. The four others detained were Chekatt's parents and two of his brothers.

Three people died in Tuesday's attack, and 13 people were also injured.

A police operation has ended in the Strasbourg neighbourhood where a suspected gunman who killed three people and wounded 13 was last seen.

There was no word on what, if anything, the Thursday evening operation had uncovered. A police official had earlier said security forces, including the elite Raid squad, had taken action on a "supposition only" that suspect Cherif Chekatt could have been hiding in a building in the area. The official could not be identified because he was not authorized to disclose details.

Authorities said a taxi driver dropped Chekatt off Tuesday evening in the Neudorf neighbourhood, south of the eastern French city's centre, after the shooting near a Christmas market.

AP journalists and a French police official say a police operation is going on in the Strasbourg neighbourhood where a suspected Christmas market gunman was last seen.

One French police official said security forces, including the elite Raid squad, are taking action on Thursday based on a "supposition only" that the suspect, 29-year-old Cherif Chekatt, could be hiding in a nearby building. The official could not be identified because he was not allowed to disclose details on the investigation.

Authorities said a taxi driver dropped Chekatt off Tuesday evening in the Neudorf neighbourhood, south of the eastern French city's centre, after the shooting near the Christmas market. He is believed to be the gunman who left three dead and 13 wounded in an attack that night.

Meanwhile, French President Emmanuel Macron, speaking in Brussels where he is attending a European summit, said Interior minister Christophe Castaner will travel to Strasbourg on Thursday evening.

This version corrects the spelling of the suspect's last name to Chekatt, not Chekkat.

French security forces are trying to catch the suspected Strasbourg gunman "dead or alive" as the city in eastern France mourned with flowers and lit candles left at the site of the attack near its famous Christmas market.

More than 700 officers were involved Thursday in the manhunt for 29-year-old Cherif Chekatt, who had a long criminal record and had been flagged for extremism, government spokesman Benjamin Griveaux told CNews television.

Asked about instructions given to police forces, Griveaux said the focus was on catching the suspect "as soon as possible," no matter whether he was dead or alive, and "put an end to the manhunt."

Chekatt allegedly shouted "God is great!" in Arabic and sprayed gunfire during Tuesday's rampage near Strasbourg's Christmas market, which left three people dead and wounded 13 others.</s>STRASBOURG, France (AP) - The Latest on the attack on a Christmas market in Strasbourg, France (all times local):

AP journalists and a French police official say a police operation is going on in the Strasbourg neighborhood where a suspected Christmas market gunman was last seen.

One French police official said security forces, including the elite Raid squad, are taking action on Thursday based on a "supposition only" that the suspect, 29-year-old Cherif Chekkat, could be hiding in a nearby building. The official could not be identified because he was not allowed to disclose details on the investigation.

Authorities said a taxi driver dropped Chekkat off Tuesday evening in the Neudorf neighborhood, south of the eastern French city's center, after the shooting near the Christmas market. He is believed to be the gunman who left three dead and 13 wounded in an attack that night.

Meanwhile, French President Emmanuel Macron, speaking in Brussels where he is attending a European summit, said Interior minister Christophe Castaner will travel to Strasbourg on Thursday evening.

French security forces are trying to catch the suspected Strasbourg gunman "dead or alive" as the city in eastern France mourned with flowers and lit candles left at the site of the attack near its famous Christmas market.

More than 700 officers were involved Thursday in the manhunt for 29-year-old Cherif Chekatt, who had a long criminal record and had been flagged for extremism, government spokesman Benjamin Griveaux told CNews television.

Asked about instructions given to police forces, Griveaux said the focus was on catching the suspect "as soon as possible," no matter whether he was dead or alive, and "put an end to the manhunt."

Chekatt allegedly shouted "God is great!" in Arabic and sprayed gunfire during Tuesday's rampage near Strasbourg's Christmas market, which left three people dead and wounded 13 others.</s>The man suspected of killing at least three people and wounding 13 others at Strasbourg’s famed Christmas market has been killed by French police, following a shoot-out not far from the scene of Tuesday’s attack.

Cherif Chekatt, 29, was shot dead on Thursday evening, two days after he first disappeared sparking a massive manhunt involving hundreds of police officers, soldiers and anti-terror specialists from three European countries.

French Interior Minister Christophe Castaner said police recognized a man who looked like Chekatt walking on the street in Strasbourg’s Neudorf district on Thursday night and approached him. He opened fire on officers when they tried to question him, he said.

“As I am speaking to you, I am thinking about the victims and the wounded. I am thinking of those close to them. I am thinking of Strasbourg and France that was hit by this terrible attack,” Castaner said.

On Thursday, Strasbourg police said the death toll from the attack had risen to three, after one person succumbed to their injuries. Five people remain in serious condition with eight others suffering light injures.

The hunt prompted a curfew in the eastern French city near the German border and forced the country to raise its national security threat level to its highest status: “emergency terror attack.”

French prosecutors said the suspect shouted the Arabic phrase “Allahu Akbar,” meaning “God is greatest,” at the time of the attack.

“It’s relief for the people of Strasbourg to know that the attacker has been killed,” Strasbourg Mayor Roland Ries said, adding that the Christmas market would reopen on Friday.

The French National Police thanked the public for their assistance in finding Chekatt.

“Thank you for your alerts which allowed us to find the wanted individual,” the National Police said on Twitter.

Earlier on Thursday, Paris prosecutor’s office said that a fifth person was taken into custody in relation to the attack. “At this stage there are five people in custody,” a spokesperson said.

Authorities said Chekatt entered the perimeter of the market, one of the oldest in Europe, by the city’s Corbeau Bridge and started shooting and stabbing passers-by on the Rue des Orfevres around 8 p.m., when many were in the middle of their Christmas shopping.

Anti-terror police flooded the market and tried to arrest the suspected gunman. He exchanged fire with security forces, suffering an injury to his arm. The suspected gunman then jumped into a taxi and fled the scene, Heitz said.

On Thursday, French police evacuated buildings and cordoned off the area close to where Chekatt had fled. The gunman’s father, mother and two brothers were also questioned by police, a source close to the investigation told CNN.

Checkatt was already known to security services as a possible threat, police said. He has an extensive criminal background that includes 27 convictions in France, Germany and Switzerland, mostly for acts of robbery and violence.

A spokeswoman for the Swiss Federal Police, Cathy Maret, told CNN that Chekatt was well known to authorities there, having been arrested and convicted several times in Switzerland for crimes such as break-ins, theft and violence. He was not on their radar as a radical Islamist or for narcotics violations, she said.

In 2017, he was deported from Germany to France after the Interior Ministry in the German state of Baden-Wuerttemberg confirmed he had been convicted of break-ins and serious theft in 2016 and spent time in a German prison. The German Federal Criminal Office said the suspect was not known in Germany as a radical Islamist.

However, Chekatt was known to French prison officials for being radicalized and for his proselytizing behavior in detention in 2015, Paris prosecutor Heitz said, adding that he had been incarcerated multiple times.

He was also on a French watch list called a “Fiche S” surveillance file. The “Fiche S” is a French terror and radicalization watch list that includes thousands of people, some of whom are under active surveillance, meaning they are on law enforcement’s radar.

Hours before the attack, French gendarmes tried to bring Chekatt in for questioning but found he wasn’t home, a spokesperson for France’s National Police told CNN earlier this week, without providing further details.

Chekatt was born in Strasbourg, according to CNN affiliate BFM.</s>PARIS (AP) — The French government spokesman says security forces are trying to catch the suspected shooter dead or alive, two days after an attack near Strasbourg’s Christmas market.

Benjamin Griveaux said on CNews television that more than 700 officers are involved in the manhunt for 29-year-old Cherif Chekatt. Police have distributed a photo of the wounded fugitive.

The attack in Strasbourg killed two, left one person brain dead and wounded 12 others.

The government raised the terror alert level nationwide and deployed 1,800 additional soldiers across France to help patrol streets and secure crowded events.

Griveaux also called on the “yellow vest” protesters not to take to the streets, as some members of the movement have planned a fifth round of demonstrations on Saturday across France to demand tax relief.</s>STRASBOURG, France: French police on Thursday (Dec 13) shot dead a gunman who had been on the run since killing three people at Strasbourg's popular Christmas market, sources said.

More than 700 French security forces had been hunting for 29-year-old Cherif Chekatt since the bloodshed on Tuesday night.



He was believed to have been injured after exchanging fire with soldiers during the attack, but managed to escape and had not been seen since getting out of a taxi in the Neudorf area of the northern French city.

Minutes before the fatal shooting on Thursday, a helicopter with powerful searchlight flew over Neudorf.

"He fired on a team of police who returned fire," a police source told AFP.

Dozens of police vehicles converged on the area where police were applauded after the shooting. "Bravo!" some shouted as people gathered at the police cordon.

Police in several other countries earlier joined the manhunt for Chekatt, a Strasbourg native and career criminal with at least 27 convictions in four European states.



Authorities published Chekatt's picture late Wednesday with police describing him as dangerous and urging people not to approach him.

A fifth person was detained by police for questioning on Thursday, in addition to the suspect's parents and two brothers who have been in custody since Wednesday.

Interior Minister Christophe Castaner, who was due to visit the scene and give a news conference later Thursday, had announced that the Strasbourg Christmas market would reopen on Friday.

French President Emmanuel Macron expressed "the solidarity of the whole country" towards the victims as he arrived for a European summit in Brussels.

"It is not only France that has been hit... but a great European city as well," he added, referring to the seat of the European parliament in the eastern French city that lies on the border with Germany.

As police hunted Chekatt, the French government urged "yellow vest" protesters not to hold another round of demonstrations this weekend, given the strain on the country's security forces.

Government spokesman Benjamin Griveaux called on the anti-government protesters to be "reasonable" and not protest again Saturday, after nearly four weeks of often violent demonstrations which has led the government to offer a range of financial relief to low earners.

"Our security forces have been deployed extensively these past few weeks," Griveaux told CNews television.

"It would be better if everyone could go about their business calmly on Saturday, before the year-end celebrations with their families, instead of demonstrating and putting our security forces to work once again," he added.

The "yellow vest" protesters, known for their fluorescent high-visibility jackets, had called for a fifth round of protests this Saturday.

The protests began on Nov 17 over fuel tax increases, but snowballed into a revolt over living standards as well as Macron's perceived indifference to the problems of ordinary citizens.

Underscoring attempts to ease tensions, Prime Minister Edouard Philippe confirmed a proposed constitutional reform, which was to be debated in January, had been postponed to allow time for more discussions over local grievances.

Some union leaders also put pressure on "yellow vests" not to demonstrate on Saturday so they would not overburden police as they dealt with security after the Strasbourg attack.

But some "yellow vest" demonstrators dismissed calls to suspend protests.

A 23-year-old protester was killed after he was hit by a truck on a roundabout in southern France near Avignon late on Thursday, the sixth person to have died during the weeks of demonstrations.

Strasbourg's location in the heart of western Europe means that Germany, Switzerland, Belgium and Luxembourg can be easily reached by car or train, making the search for Chekatt more complicated.

Swiss police had reinforced border checks, while German authorities also widely published the photo of the suspect, which showed him with dark hair, a short beard and a visible mark on his forehead.

In 2016, a militant responsible for an attack on a Christmas market in Berlin was shot and killed only three days later in Milan in northern Italy after travelling through the Netherlands and France.

The Strasbourg suspect, who lived in a rundown apartment block a short drive from the city centre, was flagged by French security forces in 2015 as a possible Islamic extremist.

France has been hit by a wave of attacks from gunmen claiming allegiance to Al Qaeda or the Islamic State group since 2015, which have claimed the lives of 246 people before Tuesday's attack, according to an AFP toll.

No group has claimed responsibility for the Strasbourg attack, but social media accounts used by Islamic State sympathisers have celebrated the killings.</s>STRASBOURG, France (AP) — A top French official says a man has been killed in a shootout with police in Strasbourg, but he has not been confirmed as the suspected gunman who killed three people near a Christmas market.

The official, who could not be named because the operation was ongoing, said the dead man opened fire on police Thursday night and officers fired back, killing him.

A local police official, who also spoke on condition of anonymity for the same reason, said the man who opened fire was armed with a pistol and a knife.

The shooting occurred in the Neudorf neighborhood of Strasbourg, where police searched intensively earlier Thursday for Cherif Chekatt, a 29-year-old suspected of being the Christmas market gunman.

Chekatt is accused of killing three people and wounded 13 on Tuesday night. More than 700 officers were deployed to find Chekatt, who had a long criminal record and had been flagged for extremism, government spokesman Benjamin Griveaux told CNews television.

Asked about the instructions they received, Griveaux said the focus was catching Chekatt “as soon as possible,” dead or alive, and to “put an end to the manhunt.”

Security forces, including the elite Raid squad, spent two hours searching in Neudorf 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.

Prosecutors opened a terror investigation. More than 700 officers were deployed to find Chekatt, who had a long criminal record and had been flagged for extremism, government spokesman Benjamin Griveaux told CNews television.

Asked about the instructions they received, Griveaux said the focus was catching Chekatt “as soon as possible,” dead or alive, and to “put an end to the manhunt.”

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.

Police distributed a photo of Chekatt, with the warning: “Individual dangerous, above all do not intervene.”

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.

French authorities said Chekatt, born in Strasbourg, appeared on a watch list of people flagged for extremist views. They said he had 27 criminal convictions, receiving the first at age 13.

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.”

Copyright 2018 The Associated Press. All rights reserved. This material may not be published, broadcast, rewritten or redistributed.</s>Emergency services patrol at the center of the city of Strasbourg which is close following a shooting, eastern France, Tuesday Dec. 11, 2018. A shooting in the French city of Strasbourg killed at least two people and wounded more than others, officials said, sparking a broad lockdown and major security operation around a world-famous Christmas market. Authorities said the shooter remains at large. (AP Photo/Jean-Francois Badias) (AP)</s>Emergency services patrol at the center of the city of Strasbourg which is close following a shooting, eastern France, Tuesday Dec. 11, 2018. A shooting in the French city of Strasbourg killed at least two people and wounded more than others, officials said, sparking a broad lockdown and major security operation around a world-famous Christmas market. Authorities said the shooter remains at large. (AP Photo/Jean-Francois Badias) (AP)</s>Hundreds of police officers are hunting a gunman after three people were killed and 12 others wounded in a shooting in the eastern French city of Strasbourg.

 The suspect, who is known to security services, and is reportedly named Cherif Chekatt, a French citizen of Moroccan descent, escaped after exchanging fire with soldiers and armed police on Tuesday. He is believed to be injured.

 The shooting happened close to a popular Christmas market near one of the central squares, Place Kléber.

 France’s counterterrorism prosecutor has opened an investigation.

 However, the motive for the incident remains unclear.



 “He fought twice with our security forces,” French Interior Minister Christophe Castaner said.

 Confirming that three people had died, Mr Castaner said that border controls had been strengthened and security at all Christmas markets would be stepped up, with 350 security agents hunting for the gunman.

 He added that France had raised its security alert level to “emergency attack”.

 Six of those reportedly injured on Tuesday were said to be in a serious condition, while six others suffered light injuries, police said.

 Police added that the 29-year-old suspect was born in Strasbourg and was already known to the security services as a possible terrorist threat.</s>Police Believe They Have Shot Dead Gunman In Strasbourg Christmas Market Shooting

Police say they have shot dead the man they believe killed three people and critically injured six others in the French city of Strasbourg on Tuesday.
Chérif Chekatt, the perpetrator of an attack in Strasbourg, France, two days ago, which killed two and wounded 14, is found and killed by French police.