Family members of the man suspected of carrying out a fatal shooting at Strasbourg’s famous Christmas market have been taken into custody for questioning, French officials have said.
The father and two brothers of Chérif Chekatt are understood to be among four people being questioned by police over the attack on Tuesday, which left two people dead and at least 12 others wounded.
Chekatt remains at large, with hundreds of officers engaged in a manhunt for the gunman after authorities launched a terror investigation.
The 29-year-old was already being monitored as a potential security risk prior to the shooting. A French judicial official claimed on Wednesday other members of Chekatt’s family were also thought to hold radical views.
Chekatt was a career criminal, who had spent a considerable amount of time behind bars since his early teens, police had earlier said.
Paris prosecutor Remy Heitz told reporters the suspect had built up a criminal record containing 27 previous convictions and served prison sentences in France, Switzerland and Germany.
The suspect was shot in the arm during an exchange of fire with French soldiers, but was able to escape the scene in a taxi, police added.
Chekatt, a Strasbourg native who lived in an apartment block less than two miles from the site of the shooting, had been placed on the “Fiche S” watch list system for Islamic extremism while in prison in 2015.
Young men from Chekatt’s block said they knew him as someone who seemed destabilised by his jail time.
“You can just tell,” said one, who refused to give his name in fear of possible reprisals from a suspect still on the run from police.
Meanwhile, a minute’s silence will be staged at all football matches in France’s first and second divisions this weekend in memory of the victims of the shooting.
Three Ligue 1 games due to be played in Nantes, Nice and Caen have already been postponed due to the strain on police resources caused by the “gilet jaunes” demonstrations against fuel tax rises.
France has been hit by several high-profile terror attacks involving firearms in recent years, including a series of coordinated strikes at several locations across Paris in November 2015 that killed 130 people and injured hundreds more.
Another 20 had died earlier that year in January in several shootings by three Islamist gunmen across the wider Paris region that began with the murders of 12 people at the offices of satirical magazine Charlie Hebdo.
Additional reporting by AP
