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French Police Hunt Driver After Attack On Soldiers

French Police Hunt Driver After Attack On Soldiers

Six military personnel were struck and injured in total, two of them seriously.

Claire Reid

Claire Reid

Police in France are on the hunt for a driver who ploughed a car into a group of soldiers patrolling a Paris suburb earlier this morning.

Six military personnel were struck and injured in total, with serious injuries to two of them. They were taken to Percy military hospital at Clamart, near the French capital, where none of their injuries are thought to be life-threatening.

Following the incident, the car - reported to be a BMW - sped away from the injured soldiers, who were on Opération Sentinelle, part of France's state of emergency, which has been ongoing since the November 2015 terrorist attacks.

The attack took place at about 8am, during the changeover of soldiers from the 35th Infantry Regiment stationed at Place de Verdun, close to the town hall in Levallois-Perret.

Paris soldiers
Paris soldiers

Credit: PA

A major police operation has been launched in order to track down the car and its driver.

"Without any doubt, it was a deliberate act," Mr Patrick Balkany, Mayor of Levallois-Perret, told broadcaster BFM TV.

"It all happened very quickly. The vehicle did not stop. It hurtled at them... it accelerated rapidly," he said.

"The soldiers were rushed to hospital," he added.

Mr Balkany went on to denounce the attack as 'intolerable'.

Patrick Balkany
Patrick Balkany

Mayor of Levallois-Perret, Patrick Balkany. Credit: PA

"It's without doubt a deliberate act ... This vehicle was waiting for them," he continued.

"The BMW accelerated very quickly the moment they came out. This happened in the middle of the town. It happened very quickly.

"Levallois is a calm place ... this is an odious aggression against our military that nobody expected."

Witnesses to the incident have suggested that the driver was alone in the car when it ploughed into the group of soldiers.

Roger Karoutchi, a local senator, said: "We have to be careful, but it wasn't a classic road accident. As for the motives, we will have to wait until the person or people concerned are arrested."

Paris soldiers
Paris soldiers

Credit: PA

There are currently 10,000 soldiers patrolling France as part of the operation, along with 4,700 police and gendarmes.

Today's incident comes in the wake of a similar attack in June, in which an Islamic State supporter drove a car carrying firearms and a gas canister into a military vehicle stationed on the Champs Élysées in central Paris.

French interior minister, Gérard Collomb, said the driver of the car was killed in what he described as 'an attempted attack' on the road, which had been the scene of two terror attacks in three months.

The country remains in a state of emergency.

Source: BBC

Featured Image Credit: PA