France: 1 killed, 4 wounded after shooting near Paris

One person was killed and four others were injured when gunshots were fired from a vehicle in a town outside Paris on Friday, local authorities have confirmed.

The shooting occurred in Trappes, about 20 kilometers (13 miles) west of the French capital, close to Versailles, and a suspect was arrested in the neighboring town of Coignieres and has been taken into police custody.

"An individual fired shots from his vehicle at multiple people along his route," the mayor of Trappes, Ali Rabeh, wrote on social media.

He later told French broadcaster BFM TV that one of the locations at which shots were fired was a playground. "It is a miracle that there were not more victims," he said.

Rabeh said the person killed was of African origin, while one of those critically wounded was of North African origin.

Interior Minister Laurent Nunez said the suspect fired "what appears to have been a military-grade weapon, or at least an automatic weapon."

French Prime Minister Sebastien Lecornu called the incident "very serious" and said that "all available resources of the security forces and judicial authorities have been fully mobilized."

He added that France's National Anti-Terrorism Prosecutor's Office (Pnat) is monitoring the situation.

The Pnat itself said it had opened an investigation into "murder in connection with a terrorist enterprise, with the aggravating circumstance that the acts were committed on the basis of the victim's actual or perceived membership of a specific race, ethnicity, nation or religion."

The potential motive for the shooting was not immediately clear but it came as France braces for yet another day of protests against the high costs of living on Saturday, with major museums in Paris and other major cities closing their doors and the government deploying a significantly larger security presence.

"We are not talking about ​a nice protest," Interior Minister Nunez told reporters, announcing the deployment of 70,000 security personnel. "We are ​ready ⁠tomorrow to be extremely firm ⁠and ​not tolerate anything."

France has also seen a spate of Islamist terrorist attacks in recent years and, although the number of incidents has fallen, authorities have warned that risks remain.

The town of Trappes has experienced its own share of tension, with a local teacher reporting receiving threats after saying that the state did not do enough to protect Samuel Paty, a teacher in another Paris suburb who was beheaded by a radical Islamist in 2020 after he showed his class caricatures of the Prophet Mohammed.

There was no immediate suggestion that Friday's shooting was linked either to the current protests or Islamist terrorism.