COPS have shot an unarmed woman in Paris for allegedly shouting terrorist slogans and threatening to blow herself up, reports say.
The woman, who has not been named, was hit by at least one bullet on Tuesday, at the height of the rush hour at the Bibliothèque François-Miterrand Metro station in the French capital.
Paris cops shot an unarmed woman for allegedly shouting terrorist slogans
AFPThe woman was shot at the Bibliothèque François-Miterrand Metro station[/caption]
“According to police, she made threats and advocated terrorism,” said an investigating source.
Armed officers arrived at the station soon after 8.30am, and the woman “threatened to blow herself up,” according to the insider.
“Fearing for their safety, the police opened fire around 9:20 a.m.
“She was then injured in the stomach and evacuated immediately,” they added.
Police waited for her in Paris, and “having refused to comply with the officers orders and threatening to blow herself up, a police officer made a single use of his firearm,” said a prosecuting source.
He confirmed the woman’s condition in hospital was “critical”.
Paris cops have since launched two investigations, prosecutors said.
One will probe the woman’s actions for “apology for terrorism, death threats and acts of intimidation”, while another is to elucidate whether the police’s use of a firearm was justified.
Prosecutors added the woman had been “reported for having uttered death threats after getting on a train in the Val-de-Marne suburbs”
The François-Mitterrand station was also shut down.
France was plunged into widespread rioting in June after the fatal shooting of 17-year-old Nahel Merzouk – a French Muslim from an Algerian Moroccan background – in the Paris suburb of Nanterre.
His killer – who has not been formally named – was a traffic police officer who remains in custody pending a trial.
Cars were burned, buildings set alight, fireworks thrown at police, and shops looted for more than a week, as France was accused of being institutionally racist.
The latest shooting comes after France raised its security status to the highest possible level following the murder of a teacher at a school in Arras, in the north of the country, earlier this month.
Dominique Bernard, 57, was repeatedly stabbed in the neck by a self-styled ISIS terrorist who also shouted ‘Allahu Akbar’.
Mr Bernard’s alleged killed is 20-year-old Chechen refugee Mohamed Mogouchkov, who is in custody.
Airports across the country were also forced to evacuate after receiving bomb threats.
The airports of Lille, Lyon, Nice, Nantes, Paris Beauvais Tillé and Toulouse have been forced to close after they all received bomb warnings this morning.
An evacuation is underway at the airports of Biarritz, Rennes, Strasbourg and Bordeaux-Merignac following similar warnings.
French Interior Minister Gérald Darmanin said there was also tension over the ongoing Hamas-Israel war in the Middle East.
French President Emmanuel Macron has called for unity over the war because France is home to western Europe’s largest Muslim and Jewish communities.
France has banned a number of pro-Palestinian rallies, and fired tear gas and water cannons at those showing their support for those being killed in Gaza.