Strasbourg Christmas market gunman shot dead by police

Over 700 cops spent days looking for a gunman who killed three people in a horrific Christmas market shooting. Now they’ve found him.

The gunman who opened fire on a crowded Christmas market in France’s east — killing three people and leaving one brain dead — has been shot dead by police.

Hundreds of police officers had been searching for the gunman. Picture: Twitter

Hundreds of officers had spent days searching for 29-year-old Cherif Chekatt, who carried out the mass shooting in Strasbourg, which left 12 other people injured, several of them seriously.

He had been on the run since the horrific shooting on Tuesday, but this morning French police confirmed he had been discovered him in the Neudorf area of Strasbourg, just south of the city centre — where he was shot and killed by police.

However, the operation is still ongoing and, because of this, a top French official has told AP that the man shot dead by police cannot be officially be named yet.

#Urgent #ISIS claims responsibility for the #Strasbourg attack via #Amaq news agency, describes attacker as "an Islamic State soldier" pic.twitter.com/0RFN8pTC3P

— Jean-Charles Brisard (@JcBrisard) December 13, 2018

He added that the shooter — armed with a pistol and a knife — opened fire on police and officers fired back, killing him.

Islamic State has now released a statement saying the man killed was one of its “soldiers”.

The perpetrator of “the attack in the city of Strasbourg... is one of the soldiers of the Islamic State and carried out the operation in response to calls to target nationals of the coalition” against the jihadist group, the Amaq agency said in a message posted on Twitter.

Three people were killed in the horrific mass shooting. Picture: AFP

Chekatt allegedly shouted “God is great!” in Arabic and sprayed gunfire from a security zone near the world-famous Christmas market Tuesday evening — sending terrified families running for their lives.

On the night, French authorities said he was wounded during an exchange of fire with security forces and a taxi driver dropped him off in Neudorf after he escaped.

Cherif was on the country’s terror watchlist after fears he’d radicalised.

Police raided his home before the mass shooting in relation to a failed armed robbery and attempted murder. They found grenades, a .22 calibre Long Rifle and four knives inside.

French authorities published Chekatt’s picture late Wednesday in a bid to track the career criminal who has at least 27 convictions in four European countries. Officials revealed he had become a radical Islamist in French, German and Swiss prisons.

Neighbours told the Associated Press that Chekatt as an ordinary local guy, but to security agencies the 29-year-old has represented a potential threat for some time, with his beliefs becoming hardened behind bars.

Chekatt grew up in Strasbourg’s Cite du Hohberg, a large, tough housing estate built in the 1960s, where he lived at his parents’ apartment.

Neighbours said they believed his brother was a radicalised Muslim but had always seen Cherif as a typical young man who dressed in jogging pants and trainers, unlike his sibling who preferred a traditional robe.

“He had spent quite a bit of time in prison and since then we didn’t see him much,” said a 20-year-old youth who has known Chekatt since he was young, withholding his name.

“He had a radicalised big brother who was always in a djellaba, always at the mosque.

“It’s frightening when you know he lived just next to you.”

More than 700 officers were involved in the search which began on Tuesday night. Picture: AFP

Authorities say he was flagged for radicalism in prison in 2015 and put on the “Fiche S” radical watchlist.

Police said more than 20,000 people in France were designated as Fiche S and that a little over half of those were being monitored.

Police described him as dangerous and urged people not to approach him. A fifth person was detained by police for questioning yesterday, in addition to the suspect’s parents and two brothers who have been in custody since Wednesday.

The nation’s Interior Minister Christophe Castaner announced that the Strasbourg Christmas market would reopen today.

French President Emmanuel Macron expressed “the solidarity of the whole country” towards the victims as he arrived for a European summit in Brussels.

The shooting has come amid a volatile political climate in France. Picture: AFP

“It is not only France that has been hit... but a great European city as well,” he added, referring to the seat of the European parliament in the eastern French city that lies on the border with Germany.

— more to come

— with wires