A gunman opened fire on a Kurdish cultural centre and nearby Kurdish cafe in central Paris on Friday, killing three people and wounding five others, and prosecutors said they were looking into a possible racist motive for the attack.
Multiple gunshots were fired on Rue d'Enghien, sowing panic on a street lined with small shops and cafes in the capital's busy central 10th arrondissement, or district. Authorities said they had arrested a 69-year-old man and the incident was now over.
"It was Kurds who were targeted," Juan-Golan Eliberg, an artist who works at the Kurdish centre told Reuters.
The Paris prosecutor said the suspect was previously known to the authorities and that a possible racist dimension to the attack would be investigated.
Julien Verplancke who works at another local restaurant, Chez Minna, said staff from the Kurdish restaurant emerged from the premise in tears after the shooting.
The incident was a "terrible drama", district mayor Alexandra Cordebard told reporters. Two of those wounded
An investigation has been opened into murder, manslaughter and aggravated violence, the Paris prosecutor's office said.
The prosecutor said the suspected gunman had been detained a year ago for an attack with a sabre on a migrant camp in Paris and investigated for a racially motivated crime. Reuters was not immediately able to contact the suspect's representatives.
BFM TV reported the suspect was a French national.
Armed police were still guarding a security cordon as investigators swarmed the scene.
One witness told French news agency AFP that seven or eight shots had been fired. A second witness, speaking to BFM TV, said the suspected gunman was a white man who opened fire in silence.
“The shooter has been arrested with his weapon. The danger is over,” a police source said. “His motives remain unknown at this stage.”
The shots shortly before midday (1100 GMT) caused panic in the neighborhood, a bustling area of shops, restaurants and bars.
Resident Emmanuel Boujenan said that the man had been arrested in a hair salon.
“There were people panicking, shouting to the police and pointing to the salon ‘he’s in there, he’s in there, go in’,” he explained.
He said he saw two people on the floor of the salon with leg wounds.
A shopkeeper in the area said on condition of anonymity that she heard seven or eight shots, saying “it was total panic. We locked ourselves inside.”
The Paris prosecutor’s office said an investigation had been opened and that “a man aged between 60 and 70 has been arrested and is in custody.”
“His identity is in the process of being checked,” it added.
News of the shooting set nerves jangling in a city that has been repeatedly targeted by Islamist terror groups since 2015.
Paris is also the scene of occasional outbreaks of gang violence.
