How Strasbourg Christmas Market shooter ‘fled France’ via Europe’s leaky borders after escaping cops FOUR times in 24 hours
Cherif Chekatt has managed to evade capture despite being shot and wounded by soldiers
CHRISTMAS market terror suspect Cherif Chekatt could have slipped across the border into Germany after evading capture at least four times, the French have admitted.
A massive manhunt involving hundreds of police and soldiers is underway in a bid to capture the 29-year-old, who killed three and wounded 14 others during a shooting spree in Strasbourg.
Career criminal Chekatt has served time in prison in Germany, as well as in France and Switzerland.
Fears have been raised he has now managed to slip across the border, in the same way the Paris 2015 terrorists and the attacker who went on rampage at the Berlin Christmas market did.
Asked whether he may have left France, deputy interior minister Laurent Nunez said: "That cannot be ruled out."
Chekatt was originally wanted for attempted murder and armed robbery but when they went to his house in the Neudorf area of south-eastern Strasbourg he wasn’t there.
He began his rampage at around 8pm on Tuesday, armed with an automatic pistol and a stun grenade.
The attacker was shot and wounded in the arm by patrolling soldiers at around 8.15pm before he fled the scene in a taxi,
He asked the driver to take him to Neudorf where he exchanged gunfire with police motorcycists then disappeared and a manhunt in the area began.
Checks at the nearby frontier between France and Germany were reinstated around 8.45pm, local media reported.
The mayor of Strasbourg, Roland Ries, reportedly said officers also had narrowly missed catching him last night at around 10pm though it was unclear exactly where that incident took place.
His ability to slip across the nearby border to Germany prompted Donald Trump tweet: “Another very bad terror attack in France… we’re going to strengthen our borders even more.”
France has raised its security threat to the highest alert level, strengthening controls on its border with Germany as elite commandos backed by helicopters hunted for the suspect.
At Strasbourg’s Europe Bridge, the main border crossing in the region used by commuters travelling in both directions, armed police inspected vehicles.
Police were also checking pedestrians and trains arriving in Germany from Strasbourg.
"We don't know where the attacker is and we want to prevent him from entering Germany," a spokeswoman for the German border police Bundespolizei said.
Interior Minister Christophe Castaner told lawmakers that the French native, born in Strasbourg, had run-ins with police starting at age 10 and his first conviction at age 13.
He had been convicted 27 times, mostly in France but also in Switzerland and Germany, for crimes including armed robbery.
He had been flagged for extremism and was on a watch list, but the interior minister said "the signs were weak."
Chekatt’s father and two brothers are among four people in custody in the investigation and a judicial official said other members of his family are known for their radical views.
French and German security officials painted a portrait of Chekatt as a serial law-breaker who had racked up more than two dozen convictions in France, Germany and Switzerland, and served time in prison.
"It was during these spells in jail that we detected a radicalisation in his religious practices. But we there were never signs he was preparing an attack," deputy interior minister Nunez said.
Strasbourg’s Christmas Market had previously been the target of an Islamist plot in 2000.
Four Algerians with ties to al-Qaeda were sentenced to prison terms of between 10 and 12 years after being convicted of a plot to detonate a bomb at the busy market beside Strasbourg cathedral.
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