Man caught after Paris car attack: PM

French Prime Minister Edouard Philippe has confirmed the suspect thought to have deliberately driven his car into soldiers has been arrested.

French security officials

French security forces are a visible target for terrorists as the nation remains on high alert. (AAP)

Prime Minister Edouard Philippe says police have arrested the suspect behind an attack on French soldiers in a Paris suburb.

"A suspect who was driving the car involved in the attack has been arrested on the highway between Paris and Boulogne-sur-Mer," Philippe told politicians during parliament question time following the attack on Wednesday morning.

A Reuters journalist saw the BMW believed to have been used in the attack, riddled with bullet holes, on the A16 highway in northern France.

In an attack that authorities said bore the stamp of terrorism, the driver appeared to have waited for the soldiers in a pedestrian zone near their base in Levallois-Perret.

The affluent suburb on the northwestern edge of Paris is home to France's domestic counter-terrorism agency. Several dozen troops from Operation Sentinel, launched in the wake of Islamist attacks in Paris in early 2015, are based there.

The car accelerated into the troops, who were starting their patrol, when they were a few metres away, Interior Minister Gerard Collomb told reporters outside the hospital where the three more seriously injured victims were being treated. Six were hurt in total.

The Levallois-Perret attack was the 15th on soldiers and police since they were deployed in large numbers nationwide after a series of Islamist militant attacks over the past two-and-a-half years.

Armed Forces Minister Florence Parly said the attack was proof there remained an active threat and that the 7000-strong Sentinel force "was more necessary than ever".

Islamist militants or Islamist-inspired attackers have killed more than 230 people on French soil since January 2015, including one attack on Paris and another on the Riviera city of Nice.

Operation Sentinel has put heavily armed combat troops in public view as they patrol key sites in military fatigues, at an annual cost running into hundreds of millions of euros.


Share

2 min read

Published

Source: AAP



Share this with family and friends


Get SBS News daily and direct to your Inbox

Sign up now for the latest news from Australia and around the world direct to your inbox.

By subscribing, you agree to SBS’s terms of service and privacy policy including receiving email updates from SBS.

Download our apps
SBS News
SBS Audio
SBS On Demand

Listen to our podcasts
An overview of the day's top stories from SBS News
Interviews and feature reports from SBS News
Your daily ten minute finance and business news wrap with SBS Finance Editor Ricardo Gonçalves.
A daily five minute news wrap for English learners and people with disability
Get the latest with our News podcasts on your favourite podcast apps.

Watch on SBS
SBS World News

SBS World News

Take a global view with Australia's most comprehensive world news service
Watch the latest news videos from Australia and across the world