One person killed and 4 injured in suspected Islamophobic shooting near Paris

At least one person was killed and four people were injured in a shooting near Paris that may have been motivated by Islamophobic hatred, French officials say.

French President Emmanuel Macron called the shooting a racist terror attack, saying people were targeted due to their religion and the color of their skin.

“The investigations are ongoing, but it is clearly a terrorist crime. It is an extremely serious act,” Interior Minister ⁠Laurent Nuñez told reporters from the Yvelines ​district, about 20 miles west of Paris, where the attack took place.

Officials said the 39-year-old suspect, who has not been named, drove through the town of Trappes, where he ⁠fired an automatic weapon at a petrol station, a medical centre and a children’s playground.

Ali Rabeh, the mayor of Trappes, said it was “objectively a racist attack, probably Islamophobic.” The official, whose parents came from Morocco, added: “The people ‌targeted today could just as easily have been my mother, ‌my brothers or my sisters-in-law.”

One person has been arrested and charged on four counts, including murder and possession of a firearm, with the “aggravating circumstance that the acts were committed on the basis of actual or supposed membership in a particular race, ethnicity, a purported race, ethnic group, nation, or specific religion,” France’s anti-terrorism prosecutor’s office told NBC News in a statement.

One of those injured was a 12-year-old girl, Rabeh told France’s BFM TV. Broadcaster ​BFM said ⁠the wounded girl had been ‌hit eight times and was in a serious condition.

This is a developing story. Please check back for updates.