French police search for Strasbourg shooter

French authorities on Wednesday continued to search for a shooting suspect who killed two people and injured up to 12 others Tuesday night near a Christmas market in Strasbourg. The suspect’s father and two brothers have been taken into custody, according to a judicial official.

France raised its terror alert level and deployed about 350 security troops and two helicopters to search for the attacker, identified as Cherif Chekatt. Police detained five people in overnight searches in the city, said Laurent Nunez, an Interior Ministry official. He told France Inter radio the suspect could have fled into neighboring Germany.

Chekatt, 29, was on the police watch list for radicalism before Tuesday’s attack. Police did not find him during a house search Tuesday but found a grenade, a rifle, and four knives in his home, prosecutor Remy Heitz said.

Witnesses heard the gunman, who was armed with a handgun and knife, shout “Allah is great” in Arabic during the attack. Soldiers guarding the Christmas market shot and wounded the attacker, and he fled in a taxi to another part of the city, Heitz said. Eight of the wounded are in serious condition, some with head injuries. Earlier reports of four dead were incorrect.

Court documents show a German court sentenced the suspect to two years and three months in prison for robbery in 2016. He also received sentences in France in 2008 and in Switzerland in 2013 for multiple robberies.