A gunman shot dead a policewoman and seriously hurt a city employee just outside Paris today, spooking a city already reeling from a massacre at satirical magazine Charlie Hebdo.
The man, who wore a bullet-proof vest and carried a handgun and automatic rifle, was still on the run after committing the attack in Montrouge just south of Paris, which prosecutors said they were treating as a terror act.
But there were so far no indications that the incident was linked to yesterday's attack in the Paris office of Charlie Hebdo that left 12 dead -- a maintenance worker, prominent journalists and cartoonists, a visitor and two policemen.
Security forces detained a man soon after the Montrouge shooting but he was not the shooter, police said. They then raided a hotel room nearby but that was unsuccessful.
"We lost track of the alleged attacker in the La Defense area (business district next to Paris)," a police source said.
The shooting happened after police and maintenance workers were called to Montrouge following a road accident just before 08:00 am (local time).
The gunman opened fire on them shortly afterwards, and the trainee policewoman -- who was around 20 -- was shot in the throat. A maintenance worker was also seriously injured.
It was "a scene of panic," said witness Ahmed Sassi, 38.
From his kitchen window, he said he saw "a police officer standing in the road. A man with dark clothes shot them at point blank range, while continuing to run."
The anti-terrorist section of the Paris prosecutor's office is now handling the probe into the shooting "in view of the current context" following the Charlie Hebdo killing, and also due to the heavy weaponry carried by the attacker and the "deliberate nature of an act targeting security forces."
But prosecutors stressed no link had been made between the two incidents.
