French policemen stand guard at the toll station of Incarville, near Rouen, in the North of France, where gunmen ambushed a prison van on Tuesday, killing two prison guards and helping a prisoner to escape. Photo by Chirstophe Petit Tesson/EPA-EFE
Four gunmen attacked a prison convoy in northern France Tuesday, killing two guards and injuring three others while triggering a nationwide manhunt for an escapee nicknamed “The Fly.”
The gunmen ambushed the prison van that was part of a convoy carrying convicted burglar and alleged narcotics kingpin Mohamed Amra, 30, from a courthouse hearing to a secure jail in Evreux, France. Advertisement
The four assailants used vehicles to follow and ram the van carrying Amra at a highway toll soon after 11 a.m. local time on the A154 motorway in Val-de-Reuil on Normandy and about 85 northwest of Paris.
The assailants used a black Peugeot 5008 to ram the police van carrying Amra, and four used automatic weapons to shoot at the van for about 2 minutes.
The gunmen had “heavy weapons” and fled the scene with Amra in a white Audi, which police later found abandoned and burned by fire about a dozen miles from the attack site.
Two prison guards died in the attack and were the first French prison guards to be killed in the line of duty in more than three decades. Advertisement
“The attack this morning, which took the lives of prison guards, is a shock to us all,” French President Emmanuel Macron said in a post on X.
The attack triggered a nationwide manhunt and murder investigation, but there were no leads 6 hours after the attack.
Macron said French law enforcement “will be uncompromising” in tracking the attackers and recapturing Amra.
Amra recently was sentenced to 18 months in prison for several burglaries is nicknamed “The Fly.”
French police also are investigating Amra for a homicide in Marseille and an alleged kidnapping in another case.
