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CNN
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French police on Friday fired teargas amid clashes with agitated protesters outdoors a Kurdish neighborhood heart within the coronary heart of Paris, the place a gunman earlier killed three individuals and injured 4 others in an assault with potential racist underpinnings.
All three individuals killed inside and close to the Kurdish Cultural Heart Ahmet-Kaya on Rue d’Enghien had been Kurds, the middle’s lawyer confirmed to CNN.
The suspected attacker, a 69-year-old French man with an extended felony report, has been arrested.
He was not a part of any far-right teams monitored by the police, French Inside Minister Gerald Darmanin instructed journalists on the scene. “He (the suspect) clearly needed to take it out on foreigners,” Darmanin mentioned.
Clashes with dozens of protesters, largely from the Kurdish diaspora, broke out throughout Darmanin’s go to to the positioning of the assault on Friday.
Whereas the capturing has not been designated a terrorist assault, Paris Prosecutor Laure Beccuau mentioned earlier on Friday that investigators usually are not ruling out potential “racist motivations” behind the capturing.
“Relating to racist motivations, in fact these parts are a part of the investigation that was simply launched,” Beccuau mentioned.
French President Emmanuel Macron deplored the “heinous assault” the place “the Kurds of France have been the goal,” in a Twitter put up on Thursday.
“My ideas to the victims, to the people who find themselves combating to stay, to their households and family members. My gratitude to our legislation enforcement forces for his or her braveness and quietness,” Macron mentioned.
Police in Paris and throughout France have been ordered to guard Kurdish websites and Turkish diplomatic establishments following the assault, in keeping with Darmanin.
He has additionally requested the French president and prime minister to permit Kurdish individuals, who wish to maintain demonstrations, to take action.
The capturing suspect was launched from detention lower than two weeks in the past as a court docket continues to be investigating his earlier involvement in violence with a “racist nature,” the Paris prosecutor’s workplace mentioned in a press release.
He was convicted twice, in 2017 and 2022, for committing gun violence. An investigation was additionally launched by a Paris court docket in 2021 for violence “with a racist nature,” in keeping with the assertion.
The final incident led to his getting put beneath pre-trial detention whereas the court docket conducts an investigation.
“At this stage, there isn’t any proof that this man is affiliated with any extremist ideological motion,” the assertion mentioned.
Following the incident, crowds gathered close to the middle, the place individuals of Kurdish descent had been heard chanting the Kurdish phrase “Şehid Namirin,” which suggests: Those that are misplaced are by no means actually misplaced however with us, in keeping with CNN’s group on the bottom.
Some individuals had been additionally heard chanting “Assassin Erdogan,” in a reference to Turkish President Recep Tayyip Erdogan’s sturdy stance in opposition to Kurdish nationalism, and his insurance policies in direction of Kurdish far-left militant and political teams primarily based in Turkey and Iraq.
Within the aftermath of the assault, US Secretary of State Antony Blinken expressed his “deepest sympathies” to Kurdish individuals in France in a put up on Twitter. “My ideas are with the members of the Kurdish neighborhood and other people of France on this unhappy day,” Blinken added.
In 2013, three Kurdish political activists had been killed in central Paris, together with the founding member of the Kurdish Staff’ Social gathering. All three ladies had been shot within the head within the obvious assassination.
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