On Thursday, a female police officer was shot in the city of Montrouge just south of Paris and has reportedly died from her wounds. Her identity has yet to be released.
Fox News reports that the Paris cop was shot while investigating a traffic accident early Thursday morning. The gunman opened fire and fatally wounded the officer, and also injured a street sweeper.
Ahmed Sassi , a witness who observed the shooting from his house, described that the gunman was dressed in dark clothes but wore no mask. He further commented on the situation.
“There was an officer in front of a white car and a man running away who shot. It didn’t look like a big gun because he held it with one hand.”
There are further reports that the shooter, yet to be identified, was wearing a bulletproof vest.
This most recent shooting follows the terrorist attack that killed 12 people and wounded 11 others in central Paris on Wednesday. The International Business Times reports that French officials have found evidence to corroborate that the two shootings were connected. The suspects for both attacks belong to the same jihadist group and are very closely affiliated.
During Wednesday’s tragic killing, two masked Islamist gunmen opened fire with assault rifles at the offices of the satirical magazine Charlie Hebdo , killing the editor and members of the editorial staff. The magazine had recently published controversial Muhammad cartoons.
Of the 12 killed, two were Paris cops. NBC News reports that one of the murdered police officers, bicycle patrolman Ahmed Merabet , was a Muslim.
The two brothers responsible for the massacre, Cherif and Said Kouachi, are Islamist extremists and currently still at large after the attack.
Paris police forces are still continuing the manhunt for the two suspects and investigated several villages northeast of Paris on Thursday, conducting house to house searches. Currently, there are reports that the police forces are embroiled in a hostage situation in the town of Dammartin-en-Goele, 26 miles northeast of central Paris. They have managed to corner the Kouachi brothers at a commercial printing warehouse.
According to USA Today , the third gunman responsible for killing the policewoman on Thursday took five hostages at a local kosher supermarket at the Porte de Vincennes on Friday, and at least two people have been killed.