Gunmen strike prison van at French motorway toll killing two police officers

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 officers killed

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.

The inmate was being transported between the towns of Rouen and Evreux in Normandy.

A police source told French news agency AFP that several individuals, who arrived in two vehicles, rammed the police van and then fled.

One of the raiders was wounded

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".

'All means used'

Justice Minister Eric Dupond-Moretti immediately headed to a crisis meeting 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.

Paris prosecutor Laure 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.

(With newswires)

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