PARIS: A man was shot and fatally wounded yesterday in the eastern French city of Strasbourg while being arrested by police in a nationwide anti-terrorist operation, judicial and police sources said.
About 10 others were arrested as part of the operation directed at a suspected Salafist network. The anti-terror sweep was continuing on Saturday in several cities around France.
According to initial reports, when police entered the suspect’s home in Strasbourg he shot at them. They returned fire and fatally wounded him, a source close to the inquiry said, without giving further details.
Another man arrested in the Paris suburbs was said to be armed and “dangerous.”
Police swooped simultaneously in several cities, among them Cannes in the southeast, where a man was detained without offering resistance.
The police operation was part of the investigation into an incident on September 19 when “a minimally powerful explosive” was hurled into a kosher grocery store in Sarcelles, in the Paris suburbs, a judicial source said.
That incident left one person slightly injured but triggered strong reaction in the town’s large Jewish community.
The inquiry into the incident has been handed over from local investigators to the specialist anti-terrorist authorities.
A source close to the inquiry, asked about the readiness of extremists to carry out other attacks against places frequented by the Jewish community, called for caution.
But he said that the suspects had “a list of objectives” and the inquiry had to determine whether plans were well advanced or had simply been discussed among the suspects.
In the Strasbourg operation, three police officers were lightly wounded, protected by their bullet-proof vests and helmets, the judicial source added. The dead man’s woman companion was arrested.
A police source said the suspects targeted in the operation could belong to a Salafist extremist network.
Investigators have declined to link the Sarcelles attack to the recent anti-Islam film.
Moshe Cohen-Sabban said after the incident that there were no “special” religious tensions in the working-class area with a population of about 60,000 and large numbers of Muslims and Jews, many of the latter immigrants from North Africa in the 1960s and their descendants.
But the council representing Jewish institutions in France (CRIF) said it feared that the incident in Sarcelles was related to the violence surrounding the anti-Islam film and Israel’s ambassador to France, Yossi Gal, condemned it as an “anti-Semitic attack.”
It came during a busy period in the Jewish calendar, between the Jewish New Year and the Day of Atonement Yom Kippur.
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One killed in French anti-extremist operation
One killed in French anti-extremist operation
Myanmar junta calls coup-protesting civil servants back to work
- Tens of thousands of public workers left their posts in a surge of civil disobedience after the junta took power in 2021
- Some found private employment, while others joined pro-democracy rebels defying the military
YANGON: Myanmar’s junta called on Sunday for ex-civil servants who quit their jobs in protest over the coup five years ago to report back to work, pledging to remove absent state employees from “blacklists.”
After the military snatched power in a coup on February 1, 2021, tens of thousands of public workers, including doctors and government administrators, left their posts in a surge of civil disobedience.
Some found private employment, while others joined pro-democracy rebels defying the military in a civil war that has killed tens of thousands on all sides.
Last week, the junta completed a month-long election it has touted as a return to civilian rule.
But the dominant pro-military party won a walkover victory in a vote democracy watchdogs say was stacked with army allies to prolong its grip on power.
The junta’s National Defense and Security Council said civil servants who “left their workplaces without permission for various reasons” since February 2021 should “report and make contact with the offices of their former departments.”
“Following verification, employees found not to have committed any offense, as well as those who had committed offenses but have already served their sentences and whose names still appear on the blacklists, are being removed from the blacklists,” the council said in a statement published in the state-run Global New Light of Myanmar newspaper.
Public employees who had been absent from work were placed on blacklists, “leading some to remain in hiding,” it added.
After the coup, in which the military ousted the elected government of democratic figurehead Aung San Suu Kyi, tens of thousands of striking public workers joined the “Civil Disobedience Movement” in protest.
The junta responded with a crackdown on demonstrators, relying on tips from informers and surprise raids to round up those on strike.
Today, more than 22,000 people are languishing in junta jails, according to the Assistance Association for Political Prisoners monitoring group.
Suu Kyi remains in military detention and her massively popular party has been dissolved.
The junta’s phased elections ended last Sunday without voting in one in five of Myanmar’s townships, amid fighting that has left large swaths of the country outside military control.
Parties that won 90 percent of seats in the previous election in 2020 — won in a landslide by Suu Kyi’s party — did not appear on the ballot this time, the Asian Network for Free Elections said.
After the military snatched power in a coup on February 1, 2021, tens of thousands of public workers, including doctors and government administrators, left their posts in a surge of civil disobedience.
Some found private employment, while others joined pro-democracy rebels defying the military in a civil war that has killed tens of thousands on all sides.
Last week, the junta completed a month-long election it has touted as a return to civilian rule.
But the dominant pro-military party won a walkover victory in a vote democracy watchdogs say was stacked with army allies to prolong its grip on power.
The junta’s National Defense and Security Council said civil servants who “left their workplaces without permission for various reasons” since February 2021 should “report and make contact with the offices of their former departments.”
“Following verification, employees found not to have committed any offense, as well as those who had committed offenses but have already served their sentences and whose names still appear on the blacklists, are being removed from the blacklists,” the council said in a statement published in the state-run Global New Light of Myanmar newspaper.
Public employees who had been absent from work were placed on blacklists, “leading some to remain in hiding,” it added.
After the coup, in which the military ousted the elected government of democratic figurehead Aung San Suu Kyi, tens of thousands of striking public workers joined the “Civil Disobedience Movement” in protest.
The junta responded with a crackdown on demonstrators, relying on tips from informers and surprise raids to round up those on strike.
Today, more than 22,000 people are languishing in junta jails, according to the Assistance Association for Political Prisoners monitoring group.
Suu Kyi remains in military detention and her massively popular party has been dissolved.
The junta’s phased elections ended last Sunday without voting in one in five of Myanmar’s townships, amid fighting that has left large swaths of the country outside military control.
Parties that won 90 percent of seats in the previous election in 2020 — won in a landslide by Suu Kyi’s party — did not appear on the ballot this time, the Asian Network for Free Elections said.
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