Paris police continue hunt for attacker

New images show suspect wearing glasses and red jacket opening fire on newspaper and bank offices, then escaping.

The suspected attacker was caught on CCTV video in a Paris underground station [Reuters]

French police have released new images of a suspected fugitive armed man, who is wanted in connection with an attack on the offices of a newspaper and a bank in Paris before escaping in a hijacked car.

The images, released on Tuesday, show the suspect wearing glasses and a red jacket when he opened fire on the buildings on Monday.

A staff member at the leftist paper Liberation was critically injured in the attack.

The man is yet to be identified after a public call for witnesses to come forward, a police source told Reuters news agency.

Police said they are following up on about 400 leads from the public. 

In an outburst of violence that alarmed the French capital, the man burst into the headquarters of Liberation on Monday, shooting and critically wounding a 23-year-old photographer’s assistant before fleeing.

Soon afterwards he fired at least three shots into the lobby of the headquarters of Societe Generale bank in the La Defense business district, 10km west of the city centre, according to Francois Molins, Paris prosecutor.

A window was shattered but there were no casualties.

He subsequently vanished into crowds near the central Champs-Elysees boulevard after forcing a motorist at gunpoint to take him there.

The attacker – who was also photographed wearing a baseball cap with a sling bag, green sneakers with white soles, and either a puffy vest or long green coat – has not claimed the shooting or given any indication of his motive.

“The French can count on the mobilisation of the police,” Jean-Marc Ayrault, the French prime minister, said.

“We will find the perpetrator of these acts so that he can be brought to justice and punished.”

Molins said the suspect had salt-and-pepper hair, European features, is somewhere between 35 and 45 years old and between 1.70 and 1.80 metres tall.

He said the same man wearing different clothes was suspected to have threatened people with a gun on Friday at a 24-hour news channel, BFMTV.

Source: News Agencies