“The author of these acts, listed as a security threat, had been sought by police,” the regional prefecture said in a statement, identifying the perpetrator as being on its notorious ‘Fiche S’. Yet he has reportedly managed to escape arrest earlier in the day, before carrying out the attack near the Christmas market at around 8 pm on Tuesday evening.

The Strasbourg tragedy comes amid a major security presence across France, which has been gripped by the Yellow Vest protests over the last six weeks. The sheer volume of work handled by the security services during the holiday season could have allowed the shooter to slip through the security cracks, Philip Ingram, a former senior military intelligence officer, told RT.

“If we’re going to protect the freedoms that we enjoy as part of society there's almost an inevitability of a level of terrorism that is going to come in there,” Ingram said. “The security forces have to be right 100 percent of the time and, remember, in France at the moment they are distracted with the Yellow Vest protests that are going on.”

“There has been a lot of unrest in France over the last few weeks, so it would be early to call it a terrorist incident,” Ingram noted, as the French counter-terrorism prosecutor has opened an investigation into the incident.

As the manhunt continues, much of the city center remains on lockdown with authorities urging people to stay at home amid the developing “serious public security incident.” The European Parliament building is also sealed off with no one allowed to enter or exit the premises.

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