Redouane Lakdim: Who is the Trèbes gunman and why did he kill three people in a French supermarket?

A man suspected of killing three people and holding shoppers in a French supermarket hostage has been named as Redouane Lakdim.

Police stormed the shop in Trèbes, southern France, and killed the suspect. Officials believe he hijacked a car in Carcassonne at around 10am and killed one of the passengers.

He is then thought to have fired on a group of policemen who were jogging, wounding one in the shoulder, before driving to a supermarket three miles from Carcassonne and holding around 50 customers hostage.

He killed two of them and injured 16 more before police stormed the shop and shot him dead.

Those injured include a police officer who was swapped for a civilian hostage and was critically ill on Friday evening.

What do we know about the gunman?

The 26-year-old was of Moroccan descent and lived with his parents and several sisters in an apartment in Carcassonne raided on Friday afternoon, Le Parisien reported.

A neighbour told the newspaper he was ”calm” and “nice” , saying he regularly attended his local mosque. Lakdim dropped his sister off at school on the morning of the massacre, they added.

The French President, Emmanuel Macron, said detectives will also try to find out exactly how and when Lakdim was radicalised.

He was known to the police for petty drug dealing, but was on a “watchlist” of suspected extremists and had been under surveillance.

Interior minister Gerard Collomb described him as a “radicalised petty criminal and small-time drug dealer”.

He said it was not clear whether he was a committed radical, adding: “It was more of a petty criminal who at a certain moment decided to act.”