PARIS: A 69-year-old gunman opened fire at a Kurdish cultural centre and a hairdressing salon in Paris on Friday, killing three people and injuring three others, witnesses and prosecutors said.

The shots shortly before midday (1100 GMT) caused panic in rue d’Enghien in the trendy 10th district of the capital, a bustling area of shops and restaurants that is home to a large Kurdish population.

Witnesses said the gunman, described by police as white and previously charged with racist violence, initially targeted the Kurdish cultural centre before entering a hairdressing salon where he was arrested by police.

“We saw an old white man enter, then start shooting in the Kurdish cultural centre, then he went to the hairdresser’s next door,” Romain, who works in a nearby restaurant, said by telephone.

Of the three wounded people, one is in intensive care and two are being treated for serious injuries, officials said.

Shooter was deliberately seeking out foreigners, says interior minister

The Kurdish community centre, called Centre Ahmet Kaya, is used by a charity that organises concerts and exhibitions, and helps the Kurdish diaspora in the Paris region.

The gunman was described by police sources as “Caucasian”, of French nationality, and was linked to two previous attempted murders in 2016 and 2021.

The gunman was deliberately seeking out foreigners, Interior Minister Gerald Darmanin said. The man, a retired train driver, “was clearly targeting foreigners”, Darmanin told reporters, adding however that it was “not certain” that the man was aiming to kill “Kurds in particular”.

The retired train driver was initially convicted over the first case in the multicultural Seine-Saint-Denis suburb of Paris, but freed on appeal, Paris prosecutor Laure Beccuau told reporters without giving further details.

In the second case, he was charged with racist violence after allegedly attacking migrants sleeping in tents in the Bercy area of the city in December 2021, Beccuau added.

At least two migrants were stabbed, a police source said at the time. “As for a racist motive for this case, this will obviously form part of our investigations which are starting now,” she said.

The shooter was released on bail recently and suffered facial injuries on Friday, requiring hospital treatment.

France’s specialised anti-terror prosecutor’s office has not taken over the case so far, indicating that the triple murder is being treated as regular violent crime at this stage.

The far right seems to have struck again. With deadly consequences,” senior left-wing MP Clementine Autain wrote on Twitter. “When will those at the head of the state take this terrorist threat seriously?” But the Kurdish Democratic Council of France (CDK-F), which uses the cultural centre as its headquarters, said in a statement that it considered the shooting to be a “terror attack”.

Prime Minister Elizabeth Borne called the shooting an “odious attack” and sent her “full support to the victims and their loved ones.”

Clash with police

Kurdish demonstrators clashed with police in central Paris after the shooting incident. Police deployed outside the cultural centre used teargas to disperse the protesters who tried to break through a police cordon protecting Interior Minister Gerald Darmanin who had arrived at the scene, AFP reporters said. Demonstrators threw objects at police in response, set rubbish bins on fire and erected barricades, they said.

Several cars parked in the area as well as police vehicles had their windows smashed as protesters threw bricks.

Published in Dawn, December 24th, 2022