Driver dies after ramming car into police vehicle on Champs-Elysees in probable terrorist attack

washingtonpost.com PARIS — A car exploded as it crashed into a police vehicle on Paris’s famed Champs-Elysees on Monday in what authorities called a probable terrorist attack.

Police were treating the incident as a deliberate act, and the Paris prosecutor opened a terrorism investigation.

The driver, whose identity was not immediately released, was killed in the crash, Gerard Collomb, France’s interior minister, told reporters at the scene. No one else was injured, Paris police sources said.

Police said the attacker — who was 31 and from the northwestern Paris suburb of Argenteuil — was known to French authorities, the Associated Press reported. He was reportedly listed on the government’s “Fiche S,” a dossier of people suspected of posing a threat to national security.

“Once again, French security forces were targeted with this attempted attack on the Champs-Elysees,” Collomb said. He added that “a number of weapons, explosives to blow up this car” were discovered at the scene.

In late April, before the first round of voting in France’s presidential election, there was a similar incident on the Champs-Elysees, when a man opened fire on police parked on the street, killing one and wounding two.

The Islamic State, through its affiliated Amaq News Agency, claimed responsibility for that attack.

Monday’s incident came less than a day after a vehicle attack on Muslim worshipers outside two mosques in north London. Since March, the British capital has suffered two other terrorist attacks, one of which involved a vehicle attack on Westminster Bridge outside the Houses of Parliament.

France also has a history of deadly vehicle attacks: In July, an Islamic State-inspired assailant plowed through crowds gathered to celebrate Bastille Day, the national holiday, on a seaside promenade in Nice, killing 86.

Security analysts say vehicle attacks often represent last-ditch attempts at violence and are difficult to prevent.

The information that has emerged in this latest incident could fit a recent pattern, said Jean-Charles Brisard, a French intelligence expert and director of the Paris-based Center for the Analysis of Terrorism.