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Car hits police vehicle on Chaps Elysees. Driver is dead – UPDATE

Paris police on Monday said they were dealing with an incident on the Champs Elysees in the city centre as a Reuters witness saw officers cordon off an area near the avenue and close to the presidential Elysee palace.

UPDATE: The man, who was known to French security services, died in the incident and the Paris prosecutor’s counter-terrorism unit said it had opened an investigation.

It was unclear how the man, who was not named, had died. Nobody else was hurt.

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UPDATE: Interior Minister Gerard Collomb said the man’s car was carrying weapons and explosives that could have caused a blast.

“This once again shows that the threat level in France is extremely high,” Collomb told journalists not far from the scene.

A police source told Reuters that the man was known to security services.

President Emmanuel Macron said last month his government would ask parliament to extend wider search and arrest powers granted under a state of emergency called after Islamist gunmen and suicide bombers killed 130 people in and around Paris in November 2015.

Some magistrates and human rights groups have protested in recent weeks against the proposal that would enshrine in ordinary law measures currently in place under the state of emergency.

UPDATE: French media reports that the men was known to security services and had been carrying a gas bottle in the car.

UPDATE: The car hit the front of the police van as it was overtaking it and caught fire, a police spokeswoman told reporters

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UPDATE: Police official on scene says incident appears to be deliberate.

“It looks like this was a deliberate act,” Interior Ministry Spokesman Pierre-Henry Brandet told reporters at the scene.

Brandet said it was very likely that the driver, who had been armed, was dead.

UPDATE: A French police vehicle was hit on Monday by a car on Paris’ Champs Elysees avenue and the driver was arrested, police said, adding that no officers or bystanders were injured and the situation was under control.

UPDATE: France’s Terrorists Unit will investigate the Champs Elysees incident.

UPDATE: French police confirms that no members of the public or police forces were injured in the incident.

UPDATE: According to French media, the men was detained for questioning and there were no casualties.

UPDATE: RT France reports that a car has caught fire after crashing into a vehicle belonging to the police.

The announcement on a police Twitter account advised the public to avoid the area, and came after people took to social media to report that a car had caught fire in the area.

The police also asked the members of the public to stay away form the area and not to try to take pictures or videos as they could disrupt the work of police officials.

Traffic in the area has been closed with the Champs-Elysées Clemenceau station being closed down, according to the Metro official Twitter account.

France has been on high security alert following a series of terrorist attacks in recent years, including the shooting of a policeman in an Islamic State-claimed attack on a police bus on the Champs Elysees in April.

Reuters

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