France prisoner escape: Day of blockades in French prisons as inmate called ‘The Fly’ on the run
Two prison officers who were killed in an attack on a police convoy in France have been named – as Interpol issued a red notice search warrant for escaped prisoner Mohamed Amra, nicknamed “The Fly”.
Dad-of-two Fabrice Moello, 52, and soon-to-be-father Arnaud Garcia, 34, were killed and three others seriously wounded when the convoy transporting Amra from court to jail was ambushed at a motorway tollbooth near Rouen in Normandy by gunmen wearing balaclavas.
Fabrice Moello and Arnaud Garcia
Amra – a suspected drug boss – is at the centre of the police manhunt for the perpetrators of the attack after escaping from the prison van during the assault.
Several hundred police officers have been deployed nationwide to find the 30-year-old convict and gunmen. It is unclear how many assailants were involved.
CCTV footage showed a black Peugeot SUV driving into the front of the white prison van, with other video showing at least two armed men carrying rifles circling the car in flames on the A154 motorway.
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Who is escaped prisoner Mohamed Amra, nicknamed ‘The Fly’?
French media reports suggested a second car used during the attack was a Sedan – stolen in the town of Pontault-Combault in northern France – which had been following the convoy and together with the SUV trapped the prison van.
The two cars were later found torched a few miles away.
Mohamed Amra
Mr Moello, a married father of twins, held the rank of captain and had joined the prison service in 1996, according to French media reports.
Mr Garcia was also married and had been a brigadier supervisor since November 2009.
His father told French radio network RTL his son loved his job as he called for a firm response from the government.
“My son was murdered! This ambush was worked on, prepared, premeditated,” said Dominique Garcia. “This act must not go unpunished.”
Justice Minister Eric Dupond-Moretti told BFM TV: “Absolutely everything will be done to find the perpetrators of this despicable crime.
“These are people for whom life means nothing. They will be arrested, judged and punished according to the crime they committed.”
He added two of the three injured officers are in a critical condition.
The attack has sparked a nationwide outcry – with a day of blockades dubbed “Dead Prisons Day” announced in jails across France today as prison officer unions respond in anger to Tuesday’s attack.
Local media on Wednesday reported demonstrations outside of prisons across the country – including in the French capital Paris, Rouen, Nice, Grasse, Draguignan and Amiens.
CCTV footage showing a gunman at the scene. Pic: Snapchat/Yan78780
‘It was a massacre’
In Yvelines, 130 people blocked a remand centre and set fire to wooden pallets, Le Parisien reported.
Inside, around 15 prison staff went about their everyday jobs – compared with the 40 usually onsite.
In addition, the day’s prisoner transportations and visits were cancelled, according to the newspaper.
Hubert Gratraud, a union representative, said: “There is an awareness of the dangerousness. We need resources and training. We need to get as close as possible to the reality on the ground: anything can happen.”
“People were shot at point-blank range, it was a massacre, a butchery,” said Ronan Roudaut, another union official.
A minute’s silence was also held across the French criminal justice system including prisons and courtrooms at 11am local time in addition to the symbolic 24-hour shutdown of jails.
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Outside Evreux jail a man lit candles for the guards killed and injured in the prison van ambush – and for his pal who was shot dead in a shooting he blamed on Amra.
He took seven tea lights from his pockets and laid them in a line beside the towering, metal jail doors, his hands shaking as he lit the wicks.
The man, who would not give his name, told Sky’s crime correspondent Martin Brunt: “I’ve come here because that man killed my friend and I’m here to honour the others he killed yesterday.”
He said his friend was one of two men killed in a car attacked by gunmen on an estate in Evreux last year, an attack he said was one of the various alleged crimes Amra was being question about.
Wooden pallets are set on fire as prison staff block the entrance of a detention centre in Val De Reuil, France. Pic: Reuters
‘Assassination attempt’
Police sources said fugitive gangster Amra was involved in international drug dealing, a suspect in a kidnap and murder case in Marseille, and had ties to the city’s powerful “Blacks” gang.
He had recently been sentenced to 18 months for burglary in the suburbs of Evreux, northwest France, reported BFM TV.
The French broadcaster said his nickname was La Mouche – or “The Fly” in English.
A prison source told Le Parisien that Amra tried to saw the bars off his cell a few days ago – with the criminal reportedly put in solitary confinement afterwards.
The publication said he is suspected of having ordered an assassination attempt – linked to drugs – targeting a Frenchman in Spain in the summer of 2023.
It added Amra, born in Rouen in northern France, was also re-evaluated as ‘Escort 3’ risk category, making more guards necessary during transportation.
Read more: Who is ‘The Fly’?
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CCTV shows French prison van attack
Dangerous fugitive’s mum speaks
Amra’s mother told RTL she had no idea her son had planned an escape.
“I went to Baumettes to see him, he was in solitary confinement, I went to [the prison of] Evreux once. He spoke normally, he didn’t show me anything. I don’t understand,” she said.
“They carry him around from right to left, they put him in solitary confinement instead of judging him once and for all.”
She said she “broke down” and “cried” when she found out what had happened.
“It makes me sick. How can lives be taken like that?” she said of the two fatalities.
“I don’t know what’s going on in his head, he’s not talking to me. He’s my son and he doesn’t talk to me about anything,” she added.
‘We’re on a path to Mexicanisation’
Right-wing politicians said the brazenness of the assault showed the government had lost its grip on drug crime, comparing France to countries with longstanding reputations for endemic gang violence.
“We’re on a path to Mexicanisation,” Bruno Retailleau, leader of the main centre-right opposition party in the French senate, said in a radio interview.
The attack came on the same day the senate released a report on drug trafficking, warning the country faced a “tipping point” from rising violence.
We must “catch the bastards who did this and put them out of harm’s way,” said French politician Adrien Quatennens on Sud Radio.
The Syrian presidency has announced it’s assembling a special taskforce to try to stop nearly a week of sectarian clashes in the southern Druze city of Sweida.
The presidency called for restraint on all sides and said it is making strenuous efforts to “stop the fighting and curb the violations that threaten the security of the citizens and the safety of society”.
By early Saturday morning, a ceasefire had been confirmed by the US special envoy for Syria, Tom Barrack, who posted on X that Syrian President Ahmed al Sharaa and Israeli Prime Minister Benjamin Netanyahu had agreed to a ceasefire supported by US secretary of state Marco Rubio.
The post went on to state that this agreement had the support of “Turkey, Jordan and its neighbours” and called upon the Druze, Bedouins, and Sunni factions to put down their arms.
Sky News special correspondent Alex Crawford reports from the road leading to Sweida, the city that has become the epicentre of Syria’s sectarian violence.
For the past 24 hours, we’ve watched as Syria‘s multiple Arab tribes began mobilising in the Sweida province to help defend their Bedouin brethren.
Thousands travelled from multiple different Syrian areas and had reached the edge of Sweida city by Friday nightfall after a day of almost non-stop violent clashes and killings.
“We have come to protect the [Arab] Bedouin women and children who are being terrorised by the Druze,” they told us.
Arab fighters said they had come to protect the Bedouin women and children
Fighters at a petrol station
Every shop and every home in the streets leading up to Sweida city has been burned or ransacked, the contents destroyed or looted.
We saw tribal fighters loading the back of pickup trucks and driving away from the city with vehicles packed with looted goods from Druze homes.
Shops and homes leading up to Sweida city have been burned or ransacked
Several videos posted online showed violence against the Druze, including one where tribal fighters force three men to throw themselves off a high-rise balcony and are seen being shot as they do so.
Doctors at the nearby community hospital in Buser al Harir said there had been a constant stream of casualties being brought in. As we watched, another dead fighter was carried out of an ambulance.
The medics estimated there had been more than 600 dead in their area alone. “The youngest child who was killed was a one-and-a-half-year-old baby,” one doctor told us.
Doctors said there had been a constant stream of casualties due to violence
The violence is the most dangerous outbreak of sectarian clashes since the fall of the Bashar al Assad regime last December – and the most serious challenge for the new leader to navigate.
The newly brokered deal is aimed at ending the sectarian killings and restoring some sort of stability in a country which is emerging from more than a decade of civil war.
Israel and Syria have agreed to a ceasefire, the US ambassador to Turkey has said.
Several hundred people have reportedly been killed this week in the south of Syria in violence involving local fighters, government authorities and Bedouin tribes.
As the violence escalated in the southern province of Sweida, Israel launched airstrikes, including attacks on Wednesday on the defence ministry in Damascus and a target near the presidential palace.
Israeli Prime Minister Benjamin Netanyahu’s government said it aimed to protect Syrian Druze – part of a small but influential minority that also has followers in Lebanon and Israel.
In a post on X, the US ambassador to Turkey, Tom Barrack, said Israel and Syria had agreed to a ceasefire supported by Turkey, Jordan and others.
“We call upon Druze, Bedouins, and Sunnis to put down their weapons and together with other minorities build a new and united Syrian identity,” Mr Barrack said in a post on X.
The Israeli embassy in Washington and Syrian Consulate in Canada did not immediately comment or respond to requests for comment from the Reuters news agency.
The ceasefire announcement came after the US worked to put an end to the conflict, with secretary of state Marco Rubio saying on Wednesday that steps had been agreed to end a “troubling and horrifying situation”.
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Why is Israel bombing Syria?
After Israel warned it would destroy forces attacking Syrian Druze, Syrian President Ahmed al Sharaa told the minority group in a televised statement on Thursday that “we reject any attempt to drag you into hands of an external party”.
He then claimed Israel has “consistently targeted our stability and created discord among us since the fall of the former regime”.
It comes after the United Nations’ migration agency said earlier on Friday that nearly 80,000 people had been displaced in the region since violence broke out on Sunday.
It also said that essential services, including water and electricity, had collapsed in Sweida, telecommunications systems were widely disrupted, and health facilities in Sweida and Daraa were under severe strain.
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At least three people have been killed after a “horrific incident” at a Los Angeles County Sheriff’s Department training facility, officials have said.
A spokesperson for the department said there was an explosion at the Biscailuz Center Academy Training in east LA.
The incident was reported at around 7.30am local time (3.30pm UK time).
Aerial footage from local channel KABC-TV suggests the blast happened in a parking lot filled with sheriff patrol cars and box trucks.
The training centre in east LA. Pic: NBC Los Angeles
Attorney general Pam Bondi wrote on X: “I just spoke to @USAttyEssayli about what appears to be a horrific incident that killed at least three at a law enforcement training facility in Los Angeles.
“Our federal agents are at the scene and we are working to learn more.”
California congressman Jimmy Sanchez said the explosion had “claimed the lives of at least three deputies”.
“My condolences to the families and everyone impacted by this loss,” he said.
Media and law enforcement officials near the explosion site. Pic: AP
The attorney general said in a follow-up post that agents from the FBI and the Bureau of Alcohol, Tobacco, Firearms and Explosives are “on the ground to support”.
The mayor of Los Angeles, Karen Bass, said the LAPD bomb squad has also responded to the scene.
“The thoughts of all Angelenos are with all of those impacted by this blast,” she said.
California Governor Gavin Newsom has been briefed on the incident, his press office said in a post on X.
“The Governor’s Office of Emergency Services is in contact with the Sheriff’s Department and closely monitoring the situation, and has offered full state assistance,” it added.
The cause of the explosion is being investigated.
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