PARIS — A gunman killed three law enforcement officials who had been responding early Wednesday to stories of an episode of home violence in central France, the authorities mentioned.
The officers had been known as to the scene in an remoted hamlet close to Saint-Simply, a small city within the Puy-de-Dôme area of France, about 50 miles southeast of Clermont-Ferrand, to assist a girl who was being crushed by her companion, in keeping with the French Inside Ministry.
The person shot on the officers once they arrived, killing a primary officer, recognized by the ministry as Arno Mavel, 21, and wounding a second one within the thigh. The gunmen additionally opened fireplace at two different officers as they approached the home. Each of them, recognized by the ministry as Cyrille Morel, 45, and Rémi Dupuis, 37, had been killed.
The officers had been members of France’s gendarmerie — the pressure that oversees smaller cities and rural or suburban areas.
Police reinforcements shortly cordoned off the realm and the gendarmerie’s elite intervention squad was nonetheless in search of the shooter, who has not been recognized.
“At this hour, operations are ongoing,” the inside ministry mentioned. “Every little thing is being completed to arrest the person and defend the neighboring populations.”
François Chautard, the mayor of Saint-Simply, advised the BFM TV information channel that the officers had been shot after arriving on the scene of a home dispute, and that the gunman then set the home on fireplace.
“The home is completely destroyed by the fireplace,” Mr. Chautard mentioned, including of the suspect, “They don’t know if he’s within the ruins or if he escaped.”
The Inside Ministry mentioned in its assertion that the “tragic circumstances of those deaths remind us, as soon as once more, of the dangers that gendarmes and law enforcement officials are uncovered to once they perform their day by day duties.”