A man has been shot dead after trying to seize a soldier’s weapon at Paris’s Orly airport, French officials say.
The man, named as Ziyed B, was killed by security forces after attacking a patrol in the airport’s south terminal, the BBC reports.
Earlier on Saturday he had been involved in a shooting north of Paris and a carjacking in the south.
Prosecutors have opened an anti-terror investigation. Ziyed B had been reported as radicalised in the past, and was on a police watch-list.
He had a long criminal record including convictions for armed robbery, French media report.
The suspect had earlier been stopped at a checkpoint in Garges-les-Gonesse, north of Paris, where he reportedly lives.
He fired at police with a pellet gun before escaping in a car that was later found abandoned.
He is then believed to have stolen another car at gunpoint from a woman at Vitry, south of Paris. That car was later found at Orly airport.
At the airport the man approached a military patrol. He tried to seize a weapon from a female soldier “in an extremely violent attack”, an army spokesman said.
She managed to keep hold of the gun, and two other soldiers opened fire on the attacker, killing him.
The attacker’s motivation is not yet known. His home is being searched and his father and brother have been taken into custody – which is standard procedure in suspected terror attacks.
A security operation has taken place at the airport with bomb disposal experts involved and a search for any possible accomplices.
Police say the attacker was not carrying any explosives. No-one else was seriously hurt in either incident.
