One person was killed and four more were seriously injured in the Paris suburbs on Friday after a man with an automatic weapon fired random bursts out of a car, according to French officials, who were treating the shooting as an act of terrorism.
The French authorities did not identify the shooter, who was quickly arrested, and it was not immediately clear what had motivated him. But France’s antiterrorism prosecutor’s office said in a statement that it had opened an investigation on suspicion that the shooting was carried out with a racial or religious motive.
Laurent Nuñez, France’s interior minister, said the shooter had fired in three separate locations in Trappes and La Verrière, both less than 15 miles southwest of the French capital, in the Yvelines area.
Trappes is a working-class city with a large Muslim and immigrant population. Ali Rabeh, the city’s mayor, told the BFMTV news channel that “numerous shots” had been fired across various neighborhoods, including near a health center and a gas station.
“The shooter was clearly firing at random and wanted to cause a blood bath,” Mr. Rabeh said.
Nicolas Dainville, the mayor of the town of La Verrière, told BFMTV that one of the injured victims was a 12-year-old girl who had been shot eight times.
In a statement on social media, President Emmanuel Macron of France expressed “deep emotion” over the shooting.
Ségolène Le Stradic contributed reporting from Paris.
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