A man that Belgian authorities had flagged to their French counterparts over possible involvement in Thursday’s Paris shootings turned himself into police in Belgium’s northern city of Antwerp, news agency Belga said on Friday.
Speaking on France’s Europe 1 radio after the shootout on the Champs Elysees shopping street, French Interior Ministry spokesman Pierre-Henry Brandet said a second man had been identified by Belgian security officials and brought to the attention of French authorities.
In a relate development, Belgium’s federal prosecutors said on Friday that the identity of the man responsible for a shooting in central Paris remains unclear and there is no indication he was Belgian.
Islamic State militants claimed responsibility for Thursday’s shooting, in which a French policeman was shot dead, via its Amaq news agency, naming the attacker as Abu Yousif al-Belgiki.
“Al-Belgiki means the Belgian but it is a very vague identity,” a spokesman for Belgium’s federal prosecutor said, adding he had no indication the gunman was from Belgium.
In November, 2015, when Paris was rocked by near simultaneous gun-and-bomb attacks on entertainment sites, two of the 10 known perpetrators were Belgian citizens.
The killing overnight of the policeman in an Islamist militant attack overshadowed the last day of France’s unpredictable presidential election campaign on Friday as centrist Emmanuel Macron held onto his status as frontrunner in the polls.
An Elabe survey of voter intentions taken before the shooting on the Champs Elysees shopping street in central Paris showed Macron in front and far right leader Marine Le Pen falling further behind him.
But even leaving out the potential impact on voter sentiment of the latest deadly attack in a series that has hit France in the past two years, neither was totally assured a spot in the May 7 runoff round.
Two other candidates were snapping at their heels.
The poll was conducted on Wednesday and Thursday, before the shootout in which the attacker also died and two other police officers were injured.
The attack was swiftly claimed by militant Islamist group Islamic State.
Le Pen has made immigration and security a core part of her campaign.
She wants to tighten French borders controls and build more jails, and says authorities are not doing enough to protect citizens from attacks like Thursday’s.
Such attacks have claimed more than 230 victims in France since January 2015.
“Today fundamentalist Islam is waging war and… the measures are not being taken to limit the risks,” she said on RFI radio.
Macron, who from 2014 to 2016 was economy minister in the Socialist government she has criticised repeatedly for its security record, said the solutions were not as simple as she suggested.(Reuters/NAN)
