Cherif Chekatt, France gunman who opened fire at Christmas market, is dead, reports say - Fox News

Cherif Chekatt, the gunman who killed multiple people Tuesday at a Christmas market in Strasbourg, France, is dead, local reports said Thursday.

A wide-scale manhunt for the suspect had been ongoing since the shooting earlier this week. Three people were killed in the attack and several others injured, police said.

The National Police of the North, in a translated tweet, thanked the public for their reports which helped "find the wanted individual."

It was posted along with an earlier tweet from law enforcement that included a photo of Chekatt.

The suspect was killed in a shootout with law enforcement in Strasbourg after he opened fire on police, a top French official told The Associated Press. The suspect was armed with a pistol and a knife, a local police official told the outlet.

Before opening fire on the Christmas market in Strasbourg on Tuesday, Chekatt, 29, yelled "Allahu Akbar," Paris' public prosecutor said, in the first official statement that pegged the shooting as an Islamic terror attack. Chekatt escaped the scene in a taxi.

Police detained at least five people with alleged ties to Chekatt during raids Tuesday morning, but Chekatt, wanted on an attempted murder charge in relation to a botched robbery, wasn't home, senior Interior Ministry official Laurent Nunez told France-Inter radio.

Nunez said Chekatt had been radicalized in prison and was being monitored by French intelligence services since at least 2015 due to his suspected religious extremism. Authorities did not say which religion; however, supporters of the Islamic State terror group were celebrating the shooting online, according to the U.S.-based SITE Intelligence group, which monitors jihadi communications worldwide.

Chekatt was the subject of a “fiche S” – an indicator used by French law enforcement to signal potential national security threats, according to BBC.

This is a developing story. Please check back for updates.

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