Macron calls deadly shooting a ‘racist terrorist attack,’ mayor says it was ‘probably Islamophobic’

A gunman firing from his car killed one person and wounded five — including a 12-year-old girl shot eight times — in the Paris suburbs today, in what the French presidency condemns as a “racist terrorist attack.”

French President Emmanuel Macron visits the working-class town of Trappes southwest of Paris, which is home to a large Muslim population, and where a gunman opened fire earlier in the day in an attack suspected of having targeted people of foreign origin.

This was a “racist, terrorist attack,” says the Elysee presidential palace.

Trappes Mayor Ali Rabeh says the man was “firing at random, wanting to cause a bloodbath” as he drove through Trappes and neighboring La Verriere.

Most of the victims were from foreign backgrounds and prosecutors are investigating whether the acts targeted the “real or supposed race, ethnicity, nationality or religion” of the victims.

Police arrested the alleged shooter — a 39-year-old man, according to a source familiar with the case — in nearby Coignieres. Officers found him in possession of a submachine gun and tear-gas grenades, according to a police source.

It was “objectively a racist, probably Islamophobic attack,” the mayor says, calling for national unity.