Early reports coming out of France this afternoon suggest that one of the victims of the terror attack that ended with four people dead is Portuguese.
SIC television news at first said the Portuguese national had been killed. This has now been amended to “seriously injured” with a bullet lodged in his head.
It appears the 27-year-old national was driving a car which came to be hijacked by the heavily-armed Moroccan who went on to shoot at police and then take multiple hostages in a nearby supermarket.
The Moroccan is understood to have shot the Portuguese driver and then shot and killed the passenger sitting next to him.
He then drove 10 kms to the town of Trèbes where he “surprised” four police agents out jogging, writes Jornal de Notícias, shooting at them, and injuring at least one.
Redouane Lakdim then stormed the Super U supermarket, taking terrified hostages and killing two – one of them being a member of staff.
All reports say Lakdim was known to the authorities for “petty crimes”. It now seems he had been radicalised.
Before he was shot and killed by police who surrounded the supermarket, Lakdim had been ‘demanding’ the freedom of Salah Abdeslam, the only terrorist left alive following the Paris terror attacks of 2015 in which 189 people died, three of them Portuguese.
As the story circles the world, the BBC has said that Salah Abdeslam is not expected to go on trial in France until 2020 “at the earliest”.
Further details about the Portuguese victim and his condition will hopefully emerge over the course of the weekend.
So far no other victims, either dead or injured, appear to have been Portuguese.
French president Emanuel Macron, out of the country at an EU summit in Brussels when the attack played out late this morning, has offered “all support” to the families of the victims and people involved.
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