ROUEN, France: Gunmen on Tuesday attacked a prison van at a motorway toll in northern France, killing at least two prison officers and freeing a convict who had been jailed last week.
President Emmanuel Macron vowed that everything would be done to find those behind the attack as hundreds of members of the security forces were deployed for a manhunt to find the attackers and the inmate who were all still at large.
Two prison officers were killed in the attack and two others are receiving urgent medical care, Paris prosecutor Laure Beccuau said in a statement.
The incident took place late morning at a road toll in Incarville in the Eure region of northern France, a source close to the case added.
The inmate was being transported between the towns of Rouen and Evreux in Normandy.
A police source said several individuals, who arrived in two vehicles, rammed the police van and then fled.
One of them was wounded, the police source said.
It was not immediately clear how many attackers there were in total.
"Everything is being done to find the perpetrators of this crime," Macron wrote on X.
"We will be uncompromising," he added, describing the attack as a "shock".
Justice Minister Eric Dupond-Moretti immediately headed to a crisis cell at his ministry.
"These are people for whom life counts for nothing. They will be arrested, they will be judged and they will be punished according to the crime they committed," he said.
Both the officers killed were men and they were the first prison officers to be killed in the line of duty since 1992, he added.
One of them was married and had two children while the other "left a wife five months pregnant", he said.
"I am frozen with horror at the veritable carnage that took place at the Incarville toll," said Alexandre Rassaert, the head of the Eure region council.
"I hope with all my heart that that the team of killers which carried out this bloody attack will be arrested quickly."
A unit of the GIGN elite police force has been despatched to apprehend the suspects.
Traffic was stopped on the A154 motorway where the incident took place.
Interior Minister Gerald Darmanin wrote on X he had ordered the activation of France's Epervier plan, a special operation launched by the gendarmerie in such situations.
"All means are being used to find these criminals. On my instructions, several hundred police officers and gendarmes were mobilised," he said.
Prosecutor Beccuau named the inmate as Mohamed Amra, born in 1994, saying that last week he had been convicted of aggravated robbery and also charged in a case of abduction leading to death.
The case has been handed to prosecutors from France's office for the fight against organised crime known by their acronym JUNALCO.
Law and order is a major issue in French politics ahead of next month's European elections and the incident sparked fierce reactions from politicians, especially the far right.
"It is real savagery that hits France every day," said Jordan Bardella, the top candidate for the far-right National Rally (RN) which is leading opinion polls for the elections.

NEW DELHI: India’s newly signed deal to operate the Iranian port of Chabahar is expected to provide it a gateway to landlocked Afghanistan and Central Asia, offering possible competition to Pakistan’s Gwadar.

The 10-year contract, under which India will invest $120 million in Chabahar’s infrastructure, was signed in Tehran on Monday between the state-owned Indian Ports Global Ltd and the Port & Maritime Organization of Iran.

India’s Shipping Minister Sarbananda Sonowal welcomed the deal, saying the development of Chabahar was an “India-Iran flagship project” and that the port would be a “gateway for trade with Afghanistan and broader Central Asian countries.”

New Delhi’s commitment to Chabahar started in May 2016 when Iran, India, and Afghanistan signed a trilateral transit agreement to develop the port into a regional trade hub.

“The signing of the deal signifies the strength of bilateral ties between India and Iran,” said D.P. Srivastava, who was India’s ambassador to Iran when talks on the project started.

“The present agreement will build on progress achieved so far.”

India’s 2016 involvement in Chabahar came after the US eased sanctions on Iran. The sanctions were reimposed by Donald Trump’s administration in 2018.

After the signing of Monday’s agreement, US State Department spokesperson Vedant Patel told reporters that the sanctions on Iran remained in place, and that Washington would enforce them.

Prof. Sujata Ashwarya from the Centre for West Asian Studies at Jamia Millia Islamia in New Delhi said it was not likely that sanctions would affect India, as its presence was helping deter China — the main rival of the US — from becoming involved in the Iranian port.

“(India) will effectively keep China out of the project,” Ashwarya said. “If we are there, then China won’t be there, and the US would not impose sanctions.”

Located in Iran’s southeast, Chabahar is less than 100 km from Gwadar in southwestern Pakistan — a flagship project of the multibillion-dollar China–Pakistan Economic Corridor under Beijing’s Belt and Road Initiative.

Ashwarya said the Iranian port is Gwadar’s potential competitor.

“It is an investment in trade facilitation with an eye on making Chabahar a hub,” she said.

“It provides competition to Gwadar, it could potentially lead to a secured corridor to Afghanistan and Central Asia, which means that India’s trade with these regions can flourish and broaden.”